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PRESS EDITION 

Released for papers published on MONDAY, DECEM> 
BER 10, and thereafter. Full permission to reprint is given 
to the press. Serial use is suggested t 



GERMAN 
WAR PRACTICES 



PART I 

TREATMENT OF CIVILIANS 



EDITED BY 
DANA C. MUNRO 

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 

GEORGE C. SELLERY and AUGUST C. KREY 
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 




~^y % < ISSUED BY 

The Committee on Public Information 

The SECRETARY OF STATE 
THE SECRETARY OF WAR 
THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 
GEORGE CREEL 

November 15, 1917 



1 LT-lo 






EXECUTIVE ORDER. 

I hereby create a Committee on Public Information, 
to be composed of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of 
War, the Secretary of the Navy, and a civilian who shall 
be charged with the executive direction of the committee. 

As civilian chairman of the committee I appoint Mr. 
George Creel. 

The Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the 
Secretary of the Navy are authorized each to detail an 
officer or officers to the work of the committee. 

WOODROW WILSON. 

April 14, 1917. 



INTRODUCTION. 



For many years leaders in every civilized nation have been 

trying to make warfare less brutal. The 

G e r m a n y grea £ landmarks in this movement are the 
pledged to Hague & . . „ 

regulations. Geneva and Hague Conventions. The former 

made rules as to the care of the sick and 
wounded and established the Red Cross. At the first meet- 
ing at Geneva, in 1864, it was agreed, and until the present 
war it has been taken for granted, that the wounded, and the 
doctors and nurses who cared for them, would be safe from 
all attacks by the enemy. The Hague Conventions, drawn 
up in 1899 and 1907, made additional rules to soften the 
usages of war and especially to protect noncombatants and 
conquered lands. Germany took a prominent part in these 
meetings and with the other nations solemnly pledged her 
faith to keep all the rules except one article in the Hague 
Regulations. This was article 44, which forbade the con- 
queror to force any of the conquered to give information. 
All the other rules and regulations she accepted in the most 
binding manner. 

But Germany's military leaders had no intention of keep- 
ing these solemn promises. They had been 

^!S\ policy 'trained along different lines. Their leading 

of fnghtfulness. . ° b 

generals lor many years had been urging a 

policy of frightfulness. In the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury von Clausewitz was looked upon as the greatest military 
authority, and the methods which he advocated were used 
by the Prussian army in its successful wars of 1866-1871. 
Consequently, because these wars had been successful, the 
wisdom of von Clausewitz's methods seemed to the Prussian 
army to be fully proven. 

Now, the essence of von Clausewitz's teachings was that 
successful war involves the ruthless application of force. 
In the opening chapter of his master work, Vom Kriege {On 
War) , he says : 

" Violence arms itself with the inventions of art and 
science. * * * Self-imposed restrictions, almost im- 

5 



6 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

perceptible and hardly worth mentioning, termed usages 
of international law, accompany it without essentially 
impairing its power. * * * Now, philanthropic souls 
might easily imagine that there is a skillful method of 
disarming or subduing an enemy without causing too 
much bloodshed, and that this is the true tendency of 
the art of war. However plausible this may appear, 
still it is an error which must be destroyed; for in such 
dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from 
a spirit of ' good-naturedness ' are precisely the worst. 
As the use of physical force to the utmost extent by no 
means excludes the cooperation of the intelligence, 
it follows that he who uses force ruthlessly, without 
regard to bloodshed, must obtain a superiority, if his 
enemy does not so use it." 

In 1877-78, in the course of a series of articles upon 
"Military necessity and humanity," Gen. von Hartmann 
wrote, in the same spirit as von Clausewitz: 

"The enemy State must not be spared the want and 
wretchedness of war; these are particularly 
F rightfulness use f u i i n shattering its energy and subduing 
man generals. **' ^ s wn l- ' ' ' 'Individual persons may be harshly 
dealt with when an example is made of 
them, intended to serve as a warning. * * * When- 
ever a national war breaks out, terrorism becomes a 
necessary military principle. " ' ' It is a gratuitous illusion 
to suppose that modern war does not demand far more 
brutality, far more violence, and an action far more 
general than was formerly the case." "When inter- 
„ national war has burst upon us, terrorism becomes a 
principle made necessary by military considerations." 

In 1881 von Moltke, who had been commander in chief of 
the Prussian army in the Franco-Prussian War, declared: 

"Perpetual peace is a dream and not even a beautiful 
dream. War is an element in the order of the world 
established by God. By it the most noble virtues of 
man are developed, courage and renunciation, fidelity 
to duty and the spirit of sacrifice — the soldier gives his 
life. Without war, the world would degenerate and 
lose itself in materialism." "The soldier who endures 
suffering, privation, and fatigue, who courts dangers, 
can not take only 'in proportion to the resources of the 
country.' He must take all that is necessary to his" 
existence. One has no right to demand of him any- 
thing superhuman." "The great good in war is that it 



GERMAN WAR PBACTICES. 7 

should be ended quickly. In view of this, every means, 
except those which are positively condemnable, must 
be permitted. I can not, in any way, agree with the 
Declaration of St. Petersburg when it pretends that 
'the weakening of the military forces of the enemy' 
constitutes the only legitimate method of procedure in 
war. No! One must attack all the resources of the 
enemy government, his finances, his railroads, his stock 
of provisions and even his prestige. * * *" 

Many other examples might be cited from the writings of 
German generals. The very best illustration 
speech in 1900. °^ this attitude, however, is to be found in 
the Emperor's various speeches, and espe- 
cially in his speech to his soldiers on the eve of their departure 
for China in 1900. On July 27 the Kaiser went to Bremer- 
haven to bid farewell to the German troops. As they were 
drawn up, ready to embark for China, he addressed to them 
a last official message from the Fatherland. The local news- 
paper reported his speech in full. In it appeared this advice 
and admonition from the Emperor, the commander in chief 
of the army, the head of all Germany. 

"As soon as you come to blows with the enemy he 
will be beaten. No mercy will be shown! No prisoners 
will be taken! As the Huns, under King Attila, made 
a name for themselves, which is still mighty in traditions 
and legends to-day, may the name of German be so 
fixed in China by your deeds, that no Chinese shall ever 
again dare even to look at a German askance. * * * 
Open the way for Kultur once for all." 

Even the imperial councillors seem to have been shocked 
at the Emperor's speech, and efforts were promptly made to 
suppress the circulation of his exact words. The efforts were 
only partly successful. A few weeks later, when the letters 
from the German soldiers in China were being published, in 
local German papers, the leading socialist newspaper, Vor- 
warts, excerpted from them reports of atrocities under the 
title "Letters of the Huns." Many of the leaders in the 
Reichstag felt very keenly the brutality of the Emperor's 
speech. The obnoxious word "Huns" had excited almost 
universal condemnation. When the Reichstag met, in No- 
vember, the speech was openly discussed. Ilerr Lieber, of 



8 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

the Center (the Catholic party), after quoting the "no mercy" 

portion of the speech, added, "There are. 

Opposition in a i as ^ m Germany groups enough who have 

regarded the atrocities told in the letters 

which have been published as the dutiful response of soldiers 

so addressed and encouraged." The leader of the Social 

Democrats, Herr Bebel, spoke even more pointedly. Toward 

the end of a two-hour address on the atrocities committed by 

the German soldiers in China and on the speech of the 

Emperor, he said: 

' ' If Germany wishes to be the bearer of civilization to 
the world, we will follow without contradiction. But the 
ways and means in which this world policy has been 
carried on thus far, in which it has been denned by the 
Emperor * * * are not, in our opinion, the way to 
preserve the world position of Germany, to gain for 
Germany the respect of the world." 

The consequences of the Emperor's speech Bebel aptly 
described : 

"By it a signal was given, garbed in the highest 
authority of the German Empire, which must have 
most weighty consequences, not only for the troops who 
went to China but also for those who stayed at home." 
"An expedition of revenge so barbarous as this has 
never occurred in the last hundred years and not often in 
history; at least, nothing worse than this has happened 
in history, either done by the Huns, by the Vandals, by 
i Genghis Khan, by Tamerlane, or even by Tilly when he 
sacked Magdeburg." 

These stories of atrocities in China or "Letters of the 
Huns" continued to be published in the 
China.° CltieS m ^orwdrts for several years and appeared 
intermittently in the debates of the Reichstag 
as late as 1906. At that time the socialist, Herr Kunert, 
reviewing the procedure in a trial of which he had been the 
victim in the previous summer, stated that he had offered 
to prove "that German soldiers in China had engaged in 
wanton and brutal ravaging; that plunder, pillage, extortion, 
robbery, as well as rape and sexual abuses of the worst kind, 
had occurred on a very large scale and that German soldiers 
had participated in them." He had not been given an 
opportunity to prove his allegations, but had been sentenced 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 9 

to prison for three months for assailing the honor of the 
"whole German Army." The outrageousness of this sen- 
tence was made clear by the revelations, made in the Reichs- 
tag shortly afterwards, of similar atrocities committed by 
German officials and soldiers in Africa in the campaign 
against the Hereros. 

The teachings of Treitschke and Nietzsche and their evil 
influence upon the present generation in Germany are well 
known. The minds of the responsible officials were filled 
with ideas wholly different from those to which Germany had 
agreed at The Hague. The cult of might, and of war as its 
expression, found many disciples who flooded the press with 
pamphlets and panegyrics on war and its place in the natural 
and political development of a nation. Before the war the 
average number of volumes concerning war published each 
year in Germany was 700, and the vast majority of those 
written by the German Army officers advocated the ruthless 
policy of von Clausewitz, von Hartmann, and von Moltke. 

These ideas, which have come to control the minds of the 
military class, are best shown in the German War Book 
(Kriegsorauch im Landkriege), published in 1902. The tone 
of this authoritative book may be judged from the follow- 
ing extracts: 

"But since the tendency of thought in the last cen- 
tury was dominated essentially by humani- 
th^^rmla War tar i an considerations which not infrequently 
Book, degenerated into sentimentality and flabby 

emotion (Sentimentalitdt und weichlicher 
GefuTilschwdrmerei) , there have not been wanting at- 
tempts to influence the development of the usages of war 
in a way which was in fundamental contradiction with 
the nature of war and its object. Attempts of this kind 
will also not be wanting in the future, the more so as 
these agitations have found a kind of moral recognition 
in some provisions of the Geneva Convention and the 
Brussels and Hague Conferences." 

"By steeping himself in military history an officer 
will be able to guard himself against excessive humani- 
tarian notions; it will teach him that certain severities 
are indispensable to war, nay more, that the only true 
humanity very often lies in a ruthless application of 
them." 



10 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

For the guidance of the officers in case the inhabitants of 
conquered territory should take up arms against the Ger- 
man Army, the German War Book quotes with approval the 
letter Napoleon sent to his brother Joseph, when the inhab- 
itants of Italy were attempting to revolt against him: 

"The security of your dominion depends on how you 
behave in the conquered province. Burn down a dozen 
places which are not willing to submit themselves. Of 
course, not until you have first looted them; my sol- 
diers must not be allowed to go away with their hands 
empty. Have three to six persons hanged in every vil- 
lage which has joined the revolt; pay no respect to the 
cassock" [that is, to members of the clergy]. 

Some of the rules laid down in the German War Book are 
illustrated and their spirit made more defi- 
German war nite in U Interprete Militaire zum Gebrauch 
ISSS^taSsuS im Feindesland (Military Interpreter for Use 
tions. in the Enemy's Country). This is a 

manual edited at Berlin in 1906. "It con- 
tains," says the introduction, "the French translation of 
the greater part of the documents, letters, and proclama- 
tions, and some orders of which it may be necessary to 
make use in time of war." Thus, eight years before this 
war began, the German military authorities were not only 
preparing their officers to wage war in a manner wholly 
contrary to The Hague regulations, but also were looking 
forward to the use of these proclamations in French or Bel- 
gian territory. Among its forms, ready for use by inserting 
names, date, and plaeo, are the following: 

"A fine of 600,000 marks in consequence of an at- 
tempt made by to assassinate a German soldier, 

is imposed on the town of O. By order of . 

"Efforts have been made, without result, to obtain 
the withdrawal of the fine. 

"The term fixed for payment expires to-morrow, 
Saturday, December 17, at noon 

"Bank notes, cash, or silver plate will be accepted." 



"I have to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 
the 7 th of this month, in which you bring to my notice 
the great difficulty which you expect to meet in levying 
the contributions. * * * I can but regret the expla- 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 11 

nations which you have thought proper to give me 
on this subject; the order in question which emanates 
from my Government is so clear and precise, and the 
instructions which I have received in the matter are so 

categorical that if the sum due by the town of R- is 

not paid the town will be burned down without pity!' 7 



" On account of the destruction of the bridge of F , 

I order: The district shall pay a special contribution of 
10,000,000 francs byway of amends. This is brought to 
the notice of the public who are informed that the 
method of assessment will be announced later and that 
the payment of the said sum will be enforced with the 

utmost severity. The village of F will be destroyed 

immediately by fire, with the exception of certain 
buildings occupied for the use of the troops." 

These forms have been of great use to the German com- 
manders in Belgium and northern France. The closeness 
with which they have been followed in these conquered 
lands, during the present war, may be seen by reading the 
following proclamations and the other proclamations which 
are printed elsewhere in this pamphlet. 

"The City of Brussels, exclusive of its suburbs, has 
been punished by an additional fine of 5,000,000 francs 
on account of the attack made upon a German soldier 
by Ryckere, one of its police officials. 

"The Governor of Brussels, 

"Baron von Luettwitz. 
November 1, 191 4- 

Placard posted on the walls of Luneville by order of the 
German authorities: 

"Notice to the People. 

"Some of the inhabitants of Luneville made an at- 
tack from ambuscade on the German columns and 
wagons (trains). The same day [some of the] inhabi- 
tants shot at sanitary formations marked with the Red 
Cross. In addition German wounded and the military 
hospital containing a German ambulance were fired 
upon. 

"Because of these acts of hostility a fine of 650,000 
francs is imposed upon the commune of Luneville. 
The mayor is ordered to pay this sum in gold or silver 
up to 50,000 francs, September 6, 1914, at nine o'clock 
in the morning, to the representative of the German 



12 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

military authority. All protests will be considered null 
and void. No delay will be granted. 

"If the commune does not punctually obey the order 
to pay the sum of 650,000 francs, all property that can 
be levied upon will be seized. 

"In case of non-payment, visits from house to house 
will be made and all the inhabitants will be searched. 
If anyone knowingly has concealed money or attempted 
to hold back his goods from the seizure by the military 
authorities, or if anyone attempts to leave the city, he 
will be shot. 

"The Mayor and the hostages taken by the military 
authorities will be held responsible for the exact execu- 
tion of the above orders. 

"The Mayor is ordered to publish immediately this 
notice to the Commune. 

"Henamenil, Sept. 3, 1914. 

"The General in Chief, 

"von Fasbender," 

The German officers were provided with the forms to be 
used in terrorizing the conquered people. The common 
soldiers were provided with phrase books which would enable 
them to impose their will upon the terrified people. Minister 
Brand Whitlock in his report to the State Department on 
September 12, 1917, writes: 

"The German soldiers were provided with phrase 
books giving alternate translations in German and 
French of such sentences as: 

"'Hands up.' (It is the very first sentence in the 
book.) 

"'Carry out all the furniture. 

" ' I am thirsty. Bring me some beer, gin, rum. 

"'You have to supply a barrel of wine and a keg of 
beer. 

"'If you lie to me, I will have you shot immediately. 

"'Lead me to the wealthiest inhabitants of this vil- 
lage. I have orders to requisition several barrels of wine. 

" 'Show us the way to — . If you lead us astray, you 
will be shot.' " 

The quotations and proclamations printed above show 
clearly the attitude of mind of the German 
frJhtfu?nfss m ° f militai 7 authorities. The policy of fright- 
fulness had been exalted into a system with 
every minute detail worked out in advance. The German 
War Boole with its "cold-blooded doctrines of the nature of 



GERMAN WAR PEACTICES. 13 

war and of the means which may be employed in prosecuting 
war" did its work in training the German military officials. 
Of this book it has been well said: "It is the first time in 
the history of mankind that a creed so revolting has been 
deliberately formulated by a great civilized State." The 
generals gave their sanction to this policy of Rightfulness. 
Gen. von Bernhardi was quoted in an interview in the Neue 
Freie Presse of Vienna as follows : 

"One cannot make war in a sentimental fashion. 
The more pitiless the conduct of the war, the more 
humane it is in reality, for it will run its course all the 
sooner. The war which of all wars is and must be most 
humane is that which leads to peace with as little delay 
as possible." 

This interview was reproduced in the Berliner Tageblatt of 
November 20, 1914. 

Mr. F. C. Walcott, of the Belgian Relief Commission, tells, 
in the Geographical Magazine for May, 1917, of meeting 
Gen. von Bernhardi: 

" As I walked out, General von Bernhardi came into the 

room, an expert artillery-man, a professor 

Interview with j n one f their war colleges. I met him 

the next morning, and he asked me if I had 
read his book, Germany in the Next War. 

"I said I had. He said, 'Do you know, my friends 
nearly ran me out of the country for that. They said, 
'You have let the cat out of the bag.' I said, 'No, 
I have not, because nobody will believe it.' What 
did you think of it ? ' 

"I said, 'General, I did not believe a word of it when 
I read it, but I now feel that you did not tell the whole 
truth;' and the old general looked actually pleased." 

Speaking on August 29, 1914, at Miinster, of the extreme 
measures which the Germans had felt obliged to take against 
the civil population of Belgium, Gen. von Bissing said: 

"The innocent must suffer with the guilty. * * * 

In the repression of infamy, human lives 

von Bissing. J cannot be spared, and if isolated houses, 

flourishing villages, and even entire towns 

are annihilated, that is assuredly regrettable, but it 

must not excite ill-timed sentimentality. All this 

must not in our eyes weigh as much as the life 

of a single one of our brave soldiers — the rigorous ac- 



14 GERMAN" WAR PRACTICES. 

complishment of duty is the emanation of a high 
Kultur, and in that, the population of the enemy 
countries can learn a lesson from our army." 

Gen. von Bissing, after his appointment as governor 
general of Belgium, repeated in substance the above opinion 
to a Dutch journalist. The interview is published in the 
Diisseldorfer Anzeiger of December 8, 1914. 

Irvin S. Cobb states his conclusions on the responsibility 
of the higher German command for the atrocities : 

"But I was an eyewitness to crimes which, measured 
by the standards of humanity and civilization, im- 
pressed me as worse than any individual excess, any 
individual outrage, could ever have been or can ever 
be; because these crimes indubitably were instigated 
on a wholesale basis by order of officers of rank, and 
must have been carried out under their personal super- 
vision, direction, and approval. Briefly, what I saw 
was this: I saw wide areas of Belgium and France in 
which not a penny's worth of wanton destruction had 
been permitted to occur, in which the ripe pears hung 
untouched upon the garden walls; and I saw other wide 
areas where scarcely one stone had been left to stand 
upon another; where the fields were ravaged; where 
the male villagers had been shot in squads; where 
the miserable survivors had been left to den in holes, 
like wild beasts. 

"Taking the physical evidence offered before our 
own eyes, and buttressing it with the statements made 
to us, not only by natives but by German soldiers 
and German officers, we could reach but one conclusion, 
which was that here, in such and such a place, those 
in command had said to the troops: 'Spare this town 
and these people.' And there they had said: 'Waste 
this town and shoot these people.' And here the troops 
had disoriminately spared, and there they had indig*- 
criminately wasted, in exact accordance with the word of 
their superiors. " Irvin S. Cobb, Speaking of Prussians, 
New York, 1917, pp. 32-34. 

These ideas, then, were systematically impressed upon the 
mili tary and official classes. It was necessary, however, to 
work upon the minds of the German people, so that they 
might lend themselves to the inhuman policies advocated 
by the military leaders. To do this was difficult, for, as 
has been shown above, many of the civilian leaders of pub- 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 15 

lie opinion, time and again, expressed their horror of the 
new spirit which was animating the military authorities. 
The Reichstag debates give ample evidence of this, and the 
task of the military leaders Would have been still more 
difficult if the Reichstag had had any real power. (See War 
Information Series, No. 3, The Government of Germany; see 
also Gerard's My Four Years in Germany, Chap. II.) 

The military authorities and those in sympathy with them 
have done all in their power to stimulate a hatred of other 
peoples in the minds of the Germans. A campaign of 
education before the war was carried on with the object 
of impressing upon the minds of the Ger- 
Hatred against mans the treacherous nature of the peoples 
Belgians. against whom the military leaders were 

anxious to wage war. Not only were the 
Germans gradually led to believe that it was necessary to 
fight a defensive war against unscrupulous foes, but also 
that these foes would violate every precept of humanity, 
and consequently must be crushed without mercy as a meas- 
ure of self-defense. The fruits of this campaign of suspicion 
and hatred became evident when almost at the outbreak of 
the war many Germans became possessed with the belief that 
the whole population of Belgium, the first country to be 
invaded, had violated every rule of honorable warfare, that 
the francs-tireurs (guerillas) were everywhere present doing 
their deadly work in secrecy or under the cover of darkness; 
that women and even children were mutilating and killing 
the wounded or helpless prisoners. 

The effect of the fables upon the popular mind may be seen 
in the following extracts from German letters : 

Extract from a letter written by a German soldier to his 
brother. (This letter, now in the possession of the United 
States Government, was obtained for this pamphlet from Mr. 
J. C. Grew, formerly secretary to the United States Embassy 
at Berlin.) 

"November 4, 1914. 

"The battles are everywhere extremely tenacious and 
bloody. The Englishmen we hate most and we want 
to get even with them for once. While one now 
and then sees French prisoners, one hardly ever be- 



16 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

holds French black troops or Englishmen. These good 
people are not overlooked by our infantrymen; that 
sort of people is mowed down without mercy. The 
losses of the Englishmen must be enormous. There is 
a desire to wipe them out, root and all." 

Extract from another letter to a brother: 

"Schleswig, 25, 8, 14 [Aug. 25, 1914]. 
"Dear Brother, * * * You will shortly go to 
Brussels with your regiment, as you know. Take care 
to protect yourself against these Civilians, especially in 
the villages. Do not let anyone of them come near you. 
Fire without pity on everyone of them who comes too near. 
They are very clever, cunning fellows, these Belgians; 
even the women and children are armed and fire their 
guns. Never go inside a house, especially alone. If 
you take anything to drink make the inhabitants drink 
first, and keep at a distance from them. The newspapers 
relate numerous cases in which they have fired on our 
soldiers whilst they were drinking. You soldiers must 
spread around so much fear of yourselves that no 
civilian will venture to come near you. Remain always 
in the company of others. / hope that you liave read the 
newspapers and that you know how to behave. Above all 
have no compassion for these cut-throats. Make for them 
without pity with the butt-end of your rifle and the bayo- 
net. * * * 

" Your brother, 

"Willi." 

The Emperor gave his sanction to the reports of the brutal 
acts of the Belgians in a telegram to President Wilson. 

"Berlin, via Copenhagen, Sept. 7, 191 4. 
"Secretary of State, 

" Washington. 
"Number 53. September 7. I am requested to for- 
ward the following telegram from the Emperor to the 
President. 

"'I feel it my duty, Mr. President, to inform you 

E as the most prominent representative of 

gram! Per0r s e e ~ principles of humanity, that after taking 

the French fortress of Longwy, my troops 

discovered there thousands of dumdum cartridges 

made by special government machinery. The same 

kind ol ammunition was found on killed and wounded 

troops and prisoners also on the British troops. 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 17 

You know what terrible wounds and suffering these 
bullets inflict and that their use is strictly forbid- 
den by the established rules of international law. 
I therefore address a solemn protest to you against this 
kind of warfare, which, owing to the methods of our 
adversaries has become one of the most barbarous 
known in history. Not only have they employed these 
atrocious weapons, but the Belgian Government has 
openly encouraged and since long carefully prepared the 
participation of the Belgian civil population in the 
lighting. The atrocities committed even by women 
and priests in this guerilla warfare, also on wounded 
soldiers, medical staff and nurses, doctors killed, hospitals 
attacked by rifle fire, were such that my generals finally 
were compelled to take the most drastic measures in 
order to punish the guilty and to frighten the blood- 
thirsty population from continuing their work of vile 
murder and horror. Some villages and even the old 
town of Loewen [Louvain], excepting the fine hxHel de 
ville, had to be destroyed in self-defense and for the 
protection of my troops. My heart bleeds when I see 
that such measures have become unavoidable and when 
I think of the numerous innocent people who lose 
their home and property as a consequence of the bar- 
barous behavior of those criminals. Signed. William, 
Emperor and King.' 

"Gerard . Berlin . ' ' 

Lorenz Miiller in the German Catholic review, Der Fels, 
February, 1915, made the following statement in regard to 
the Emperor's telegram: 

"Officially no instance has been proven of persons 
_ , . having fired with the help of priests from 

Ge^i atl ° n a the towers of churches. All that has been 
made known up to the present, and that 
has been made the object of inquiry, concerning alleged 
atrocities attributed to Catholic priests during this war, 
has been shown to be false ana altogether imaginary, 
without any exception. Our Emperor telegraphed to 
the President of the United States of America that even 
women and priests had committed atrocities during this 
guerilla warfare on wounded soldiers, doctors and nurses 
attached to the field ambulances. How this telegram 
can be reconciled with the fact stated above we shall 
not be able to learn until after the war. 

18922°— 17 2 



18 GERMAN WAE PRACTICES. 

The Vorwarts, of Berlin, October 22, 1914, said: 

"We have already been able to establish the falseness 

of a great number of assertions which have V 
Refutation by ^ een ma( j e w ith great precision and published 
Vorwarts. everywhere in the press, concerning alleged 

cruelties committed, by the populations of the countries 
with which Germany is at war, upon German soldiers 
and civilians. We are now in a position to silence two 
others of these fantastic stories. 

"The War Correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt 
spoke a few weeks ago of cigars and cigarettes filled with 
powder alleged to have been given out or sold to our sol- 
diers with diabolical intent. He even pretended that 
he had seen with his own eyes hundreds of this kind of 
cigarettes. We learn from an authentic source that this 
story of cigars and cigarettes is nothing but a brazen 
invention. Stories of soldiers whose eyes are alleged to 
have been torn out by francs-tireurs are circulated 
throughout Germany. Not a single case of this kind 
has been officially established. In every instance where 
it has been possible to test the story its inaccuracy has 
been demonstrated. 

"It matters little that reports of this nature bear an 
appearance of positive certitude, or are even vouched 
for by eye-witnesses. The desire for notoriety, the 
absence of criticism, and personal error play an unfor- 
tunate part in the days in which we are living. Every 
nose shot off or simply bound up, every eye removed, is 
immediately transformed into a nose or eye torn away by 
the francs-tireurs. Already the Volkszeitung of Cologne 
has been able, contrary to the very categorical assertions 
from Aix-la-Chapelle, to prove that there was no soldier 
with his eyes torn out in the field ambulance of this 
town. It was said, also, that people wounded in this 
way were under treatment in the neighborhood of Berlin, 
but whenever enquiries have been made in regard to 
these reports, their absolute falsity has been demon- 
strated. At length these reports were concentrated at 
Gross Lichterf elde. A newspaper published at noon and 
widely circulated in Berlin printed a few days ago in 
large type the news that at the Lazaretto of Lichterf elde 
alone there were 'ten German soldiers, only slightly 
wounded, whose eyes had been wickedly torn out. ' But 
to a request for information by comrade Liebknecht the 
following written reply was sent by the chief medical 



GERMAN" WAR PRACTICES. 19 

officer of the above-mentioned field hospital, dated the 
18th of the month: 
" 'Sir, 

'Happily there is no truth whatever in these 
stories. 

'Yours obediently, 

'Professor Rautenberg.' " 
Thus the teachings of the German War Book and of the 
German apostles of frightfulness, suspicion, 
German soldiers and hatred, had now begun to bear their 
atrocities. * natural fruit. But the voice of protest was 

not entirely silent. A considerable number 
of letters by German soldiers who were shocked by the Ger- 
man atrocities were sent to Ambassador Gerard, because he 
was the representative of the United States, the leading neu- 
tral nation. The three letters which follow, in translation, 
were received by the American ambassador from German 
soldiers. They were obtained for this pamphlet from Secre- 
tary Grew; they illustrate both the system and the horror of 
it, which the writers felt. 

Here is the protest of a German soldier, an eye-witness of 
the slaughter of Russian soldiers in the Masurian lakes and 
swamps : 

"It was frightful, heart-rending, as these masses of 
human beings were driven to destruction. Above the 
terrible thunder of the cannon could be heard the heart- 
rending cries of the Russians: 'O Prussians! O Prus- 
sians! — but there was no mercy. Our Captain had 
ordered: 'The whole lot must die; so rapid fire.' As I 
have heard, five men and one officer on our side went 
mad from those heart-rending cries. But most of my com- 
rades and the officers joked as the unarmed and helpless 
Russians shrieked for mercy while they were being 
suffocated in the swamps and shot down. The order 
was : ' Close up and at it harder !' For days afterwards 
those heart-rending yells followed me and I dare not 
think of them or I shall go mad. There is no God, 
there is no morality and no ethics any more. There 
are no human beings any more, but only beasts. Down 
with militarism. 

" This was the experience of a Prussian soldier. At 
present wounded; Berlin, October 22, 1914. 

"If you are a truth-loving man, please receive these 
lines from a common Prussian soldier." 



20 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

Here is the testimony of another German soldier on the 
Eastern front. 

"Russian Poland, December 18, '1J.. 
"In the name of Christianity I send you these words. 
"My conscience forces me as a Christian German 
soldier to inform you of these lines. 

"Wounded Russians are killed with the bayonet ac- 
cording to orders. 

"And Russians who have surrendered are often shot 
down in masses according to orders, in spite of their 
heart-rending prayers. 

"In the hope that you, as the representative of a 
Christian State will protest against this, I sign myself, 
"A German Soldier and Christian. 
"I would give my name and regiment, but these 
words could get me court-martialed for divulging mili- 
tary secrets." 

The third letter, from the Western front, shows the same 
horror of the system of which the writer was a witness. 

"To the 

"American Government, 

" Washington, U. S. A. 

"Englishmen who have surrendered are shot down in 
small groups. With the French one is more consid- 
erate. I ask whether men let themselves be taken 
prisoner in order to be disarmed and shot down after- 
wards ? Is that chivalry in battle ? It is no longer a 
secret among the people; one hears everywhere that 
few prisoners are taken; they are shot down in small 
groups. They say naively : 'We don't want any unnec- 
essary mouths to feed. Where there is no one to enter 
complaint, there is no judge.' Is there then no power 
in the world which can put an end to these murders and 
rescue the victims ? Where is Christianity ? Where is 
right ? Might is right. 

"A Soldier and Man Who Is No Barbarian." 

Many of the Germans, as has been already indicated, do 
Socialists op- not believe the reports of the atrocities 
pose system. committed by the Belgian civilians and 

refuse to accept the system of frightfulness. The Vorwarts, 
the leading socialist paper, which has a very wide circle of 
readers, has opposed the policy of frightfulness. All honor 
to its editors who have so courageously opposed the power- 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 21 

ful military authority! Its editorial, entitled "Our Foes," 
published August 23, 1914, reads as follows: 

"We wish to show ourselves humane and friendly 
towards those whom the fortune of war has played 
into our hands as prisoners. But we wish also to be 
humane towards our foes on the field. We must fight 
them. * * * But fighting does not mean murder- 
ing. It does not mean being barbarous. * * * 

"What should one say when even such an organ as 
the Deutsches Offizier-Blatt expresses its sympathy with 
a demand that 'the beasts' who are taken as francs- 
tireurs should not be killed but only wounded so that 
they may then be left to a fate ' which makes any help 
impossible % ' Or what should we say when the Deutsches 
Offizier-Blatt states that ' a punitive destruction even of 
whole regions' cannot 'afford full recompense for the 
bones of a single murdered Pomeranian grenadier?' 
Those are the desires of blood-thirsty fanatics and we 
are thoroughly ashamed of ourselves because it is pos- 
sible that there are people among us who urge such 
things. Such disclosures in themselves, even if they 
are not followed out, are likely to place our fighting 
quite in the wrong before all the world. * * * 
Let us show knightlrness even though we are of the pro- 
letariat. Let us take such pains that when the fight has 
finally been fought it will also not be so difficult again 
to work in common as brothers with our class associates 
on the other side of the border." 

On the following day, August 24, 1914, the Vorwarts re- 
turned to the attack in an editorial "Against Barbarism." 

* * * "One might, in the first place, possibly 

believe that such a demand for a bloody 

dJSUIS G S! vengeance [against alleged Belgian outrages] 

UCXLUX.11U. UlclCO j J} * "I 1 * 111* 

of barbarism.'' emanates from a single disease-racked brain; 
but it appears that whole groups among cer- 
tain classes who represent German Kultur want to in- 
dulge in orgies of barbarism and to devise a whole 
system for the purpose of organizing ' a war of revenge.' 
"What of law and custom! Such thoughts do not 
stir a 'great nation.' Thus in a leading article of the 
Berliner Neueste Nachrichien, the demand is made that 
all the authorities in Brussels — one, the second Burgo- 
master, is generously excepted — should be immediately 
seized and subjected to trial in order to expiate the 
wrongs which, according to fragmentary and highly un- 
certain reports, were said to have been committed by 
the people. They demand that the captured city should 



22 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

immediately pay a fine of 500,000,000 marks; that all 
stores of the conquered territory be requisitioned with- 
out paying the inhabitants a single penny for them." 

Three years later, August 26, 1917, the Vorwarts quoted 
the following passage from the Deutsche Tageszeitung: 

" We have a ring of politicians who hold that might 

makes right (Machtpolitiker) who despise the 

Still hold same forces of the inner life and believe that they 

opinions. must eliminate all ethical points of view 

* * * from foreign and social politics. 

For them, Germany of the present and of the future is 

the country of the Krupps and Borsigs, of the Zeppelins 

and the U-boats. Any idea of a connection between 

politics and morals is rejected and any reference to the 

right of a moral method of consideration is ridiculed as 

delusion and sentimentality." 

Naturally the reports of the atrocities committed by the 

Germans and the Emperor's declaration 

Belgian warn- that the war would henceforth assume a ter- 

ing of danger. r ible character (grausamen Charakter) caused 

grave anxiety among the Belgians. In order 

to avoid the danger of reprisals, the Belgian Government, at 

the beginning of the invasion, had every Belgian newspaper 

publish each day the following notice on its first page, in 

large print: 

"to civilians. 

"The Minister of the Interior advises civilians in case 
the enemy should show himself in their district: 

"Not to fight; 

"To utter no insulting or threatening words; 

" To remain within their houses and close the windows ; 
so that it will be impossible to allege that there was any 
provocation; 

"To evacuate any houses or isolated hamlet which 
the soldiers may occupy in order to defend themselves, 
so that it cannot be alleged that civilians have fired; 

"An act of violence committed by a single civilian 
would be a crime for which the law provides _ arrest 
and punishment. It is all the more reprehensible in that 
it might serve as a pretext for measures of oppression, 
resulting in bloodshed or pillage, or the massacre of the 
innocent population with the women and children." 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 23 

In the hope of arousing the sympathy and securing the aid 
of the neutral nations, the Belgian Government appointed a 
committee to ascertain the facts about the German practices. 
The evidence collected by the Belgian commissioners is 
detailed and explicit, and their reports give names, places, 
and dates. It is not possible, however, to include in this 
pamphlet more than the following summary of the charges 
they make against the Germans: 

" 1. That thousands of unoffending civilians, including 
women and children, were murdered by the Germans. 

"2. That women had been outraged. 

"3. That the custom of the German soldiers imme- 
diately on entering a town was to break into wineshops 
and the cellars of private houses and madden themselves 
with drink. 

"4. That German officers and soldiers looted on a 
gigantic and systematic scale, and, with the connivance 
of the German authorities, sent back a large part of the 
booty to Germany. 

"5. That the pillage had been accompanied by wan- 
ton destruction and by bestial and sacrilegious practices. 

"6. That cities, towns, villages, and isolated buildings 
were destroyed. 

"7. That in the course of such destruction human 
beings were burnt alive. 

"8. That there was a uniform practice of taking 
hostages and thereby rendering great numbers of admit- 
tedly innocent people responsible for the alleged wrong- 
doings of others. 

"9. That large numbers of civilian men and women 
had been virtually enslaved by the Germans, being 
forced against their will to work for the enemies of their 
country, or had been carried off like cattle into Ger- 
many, where all trace of them had been lost. 

11 10. That cities, towns, and villageshad been fined and 
their inhabitants maltreated because of the success 
gained by the Belgian over the German soldiers. 

"11. That public monuments and works of art had 
been wantonly destroyed by the invaders. 

"12. And that generally the Regulations of the Hague 
Conference and the customs of civilized warfare had 
been ignored by the Germans, and that amongst other 
breaches of such regulations and customs, the Germans 
had adopted a new and inhuman practice of driving 
Belgian men, women, and children in front of them as a 
screen between them and the allied soldiers." 



24 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

The German authorities undertook to defend themselves 
against the terrible indictment in the report published by the 
Belgian government and appointed a German commission, 
which collected a huge mass of materials designed to show 
that their acts of cruelty were merely acts of reprisal neces- 
sitated by the deeds of the Belgians. This mass of testimony 
was published in a German White Book with the title Die 
volkerrechtswidrige Fuhrung des Belgisclien VoTkskriegs. 

The German commission declared in its findings that the 
German soldiers had acted with humanity, restraint, and 
Christian forbearance. But the sworn statements of Ger- 
man soldiers, which the commission published, show the 
reverse to be true. 

It has been well said that the publication of this German 

White Book was "an amazing official blun- 

German White d er# > > The neutral world, whose good opinion 
Book reveals ' =». r . 

atrocities. Germany sought, was not convinced by it 

that the Belgians had committed the atroci- 
ties with which the Germans charged them. On the other 
hand, this White Book, published by the German Govern- 
ment, will be accepted by everyone as conclusive evidence 
of the massacres and other brutal deeds which were carried 
out as "reprisals" by the orders of the German military 
authorities in Belgium. The names of the German officers 
who gave the terrible orders are published officially and 
"freqeuntly the very men themselves come forward and 
depose coldly and callously to acts which have degraded the 
German Army and left a stain upon its banners that [future] 
generations of chivalry will not efface." 

Indeed, in the light of the admissions of the German White 
Book, it is not too much to say that the time has already 
come which was spoken of by President Wilson in his 
dispatch to President Poincar6, September 19, 1914, when 
he said (speaking for "a nation which abhors inhuman prac- 
tices in the conduct of a war") : 

"The time will come when this great conflict is over 
and when the truth can be impartially determined. 
When that time arrives those responsible for violations 
of the rules of civilized warfare, if such violations have 
occurred, and for false charges against their adver- 
saries, must of course bear the burden of the judgment 
of the world." 



CHARACTER OF THE MATERIAL USED IN THIS 
PAMPHLET. 

In this pamphlet throughout, as in the preceding pages, 
the evidence is drawn mainly from German 
German sources, and American sources. The German sources 
include official proclamations and other offi- 
cial utterances, letters and diaries of German soldiers, and 
quotations from German newspapers. The diaries which 
are so frequently quoted form a unique source. The Rules 
for Field Service of the German Army advises each soldier 
to keep such a diary while on active service. Very many 
German soldiers who have been taken prisoner had kept 
such diaries, and these have been confiscated by the captors. 
Many have been published, frequently with facsimile re- 
productions to guarantee their authenticity. The best 
known collection was made by Bedier, whom Prof. Holl- 
mann, of the University of Berlin, properly described as "the 
distinguished Prof. Joseph Bedier of the College de France." 
Of Bedier 's publication Prof. Nyrop, of the University of 
Copenhagen, says: 

'He has translated the diaries and commented upon 
them just as one does with all old historical documents, 
and, in order that everyone may be in a position to check 
up his work, he has also accompanied the account with 
facsimile copies of the documents he used. Here, ac- 
cordingly, at the outset every proof of the evidence which 
he has employed is provided. No falsification is pos- 
sible. The accounts are those of eyewitnesses, and 
these eyewitnesses are Germans. ^They tell what 
they themselves or their comrades have done, and 
Bedier accompanies their remarks with running com- 
ments which show that not only have common law and 
the Hague Conventions been violated, but sins have 
also been committed against the most elementary laws 
of humanity. Both the material and the presentation 
are unassailable. The details which are provided by 
the German soldiers in regard to their own violent acts 
are horror-striking." 

Prof. Hollmann attempted to prove that Bedier had made 
mistakes in translating and interpreting, but he did not 

25 



26 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

deny the genuineness of the diaries. "These notebooks," 
he says, "may well be authentic and I accept this without 
further comment for all those which are provided with the 
name of their authors and whose authenticity can in any case 
be established after the war." 

The American evidence is drawn mainly from material in 

the archives of the State Department. In 

American addition, statements from our ambassadors 

sources. and ministers and other well-known officials 

and authors are given. Messrs. Hoover, Kel- 
logg, and Walcott have written statements especially for this 
pamphlet. All of this material is essentially the testimony 
of neutrals, for it is based wholly on observations made before 
the United States entered the war. Occasionally official 
documents and well authenticated facts from foreign sources 
are used. 

The purpose of this pamphlet is to show that the system 

of f rightfulness, which is itself the greatest 
Frightfulness atrocity, is the definite policy of the German 

Government, against which more humane 
German soldiers themselves revolted at times. For this 
reason it has not seemed necessary to set forth the individual 
acts of cruelty; such acts are cited only when necessary to 
illustrate the system. Anyone who wishes to read chapters 
of horrors can find them in the Report of the Committee on 
Alleged German Outrages, presided over by the. former British 
Ambassador to this country and therefore generally known 
as "the Bryce report;" in the official reports by the Belgian 
Commission d'Enquete;m the official French reports compiled 
under the auspices of the French minister for foreign affairs ; 
in many other publications, and especially in the conclusive 
admissions of the official German White Book cited above. 
The last, published by the German Government, is the most 
damning testimony concerning the system of frightfulness. 



TREATMENT OF CIVILIANS. 



I. MASSACRES. 



In the wars waged in ancient times it was taken for granted 

that conquered peoples might be either killed, 

Protection of tortured, or held as slaves; that their prop- 

?£2ed to b by*GS£- ert y WOuld be taken apd that their lands 
many. would be devastated. "Vae victis! — woe to 

the conquered!" For two centuries or more 
there has been a steady advance in introducing- ideas of 
humanity and especially in confining the evils of warfare to 
the combatants. The ideal seemed to have become so 
thoroughly established as a part of international law that 
the powers at The Hague thought it sufficient merely to state 
the general principles in Article XLVI of the regulations: 
"Family honors and rights, the lives of persons and private 
property, as well as religious convictions and practice, must 
be respected. Private property can not be confiscated." 
Germany, in common with the other powers, solemnly 

pledged her faith to keep this article, but 

But her mili- her military leaders had no intention of 
tary leaders did n • rrn_ i. i i_ ■ • i • ^i 

not acquiesce. doing so. They had been tramed in the 

ideas voiced by Gen. von Hartmann 40 years 
ago: "Terrorism is seen to be a relatively gentle procedure, 
useful to keep the masses of the people in a state of obedi- 
ence." This had been Bismarck's policy, too. According 
to Moritz Busch, Bismarck's biographer, Bismarck, ex- 
asperated by the French resistance, which was still con- 
tinuing in January, 1871, said: 

"If in the territory which we occupy, we can not supply 
everything for our troops, from time to time 
ide&hiis'7U S we snau sen d a flying column into the locali- 
ties which are recalcitrant. We shall shoot, 
hang, and burn. After that has happened a few times, the 
inhabitants will finally come to their senses." 

The frightfulness taught by the German leaders had held 
full sway in Belgium. This is best seen in the entries in the 

diaries of the individual German soldiers. 

27 



28 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

EXTRACTS FROM GERMAN WAR DIARIES. 

"During the night of August 15-16 Engineer Gr gave 

the alarm in the town of Vise. Everyone was shot or 
taken prisoner, and the houses were burnt. The prisoners 
were made to march and keep up with the troops." (From 
the diary of noncommissioned officer Reinhold Koehn of the 
Second Battalion of Engineers, Third Army Corps.) 



"A horrible bath of blood. The whole village burnt, the 
French thrown into the blazing houses, civilians with the 
rest." (From the diary of Private Hassemer, of the Eighth 
Army Corps.) 



"In the night of August 18-19 the village of Saint-Maurice 
was punished for having fired on German soldiers by being 
burnt to the ground by the German troops (two regiments, 
the 12th Landwehr and the 17th). The village was sur- 
rounded, men posted about a yard from one another, so 
that no one could get out. Then the Uhlans set fire to it, 
house by house. Neither man, woman, nor child could 
escape; only the greater part of the live stock we carried off, 
as that could be used. Anyone who ventured to come out 
was shot down. All the inhabitants left in the village were 
burnt with the houses." (From the diary of Private Karl 
Scheufele, of the Third Bavarian Regiment of Landwehr 
Infantry.) 



"At 10 o'clock in the evening the first battalion of the 
178th marched down the steep incline into the burning 
village to the north of Dinant. A terrific spectacle of 
ghastly beauty. At the entrance to the village lay about 
fifty dead civilians, shot for having fired upon our troops 
from ambush. In the course of the night many others 
were also shot, so that we counted over 200. Women and 
children, lamp in hand, were forced to look on at the horrible 
scene. We ate our rice later in the midst of the corpses, 
for we had had nothing since morning. When we searched 
the houses we found plenty of wine and spirit, but no 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 29 

eatables. Captain Hamann was drunk. " (This last phrase 
in shorthand.) (From the diary of Private Philipp, of the 
One hundred and Seventy-Eighth Regiment of Infantry, 
Twelfth Army Corps.) 



"Aug. 6th crossed frontier. Inhabitants on border very 
good to us and give us many things. There is no difference 
noticeable. 

"Aug. 23rd, Sunday (between Birnal and Dinant, village 
of Disonge). At 11 o'clock the order comes to advance 
after the artillery has thoroughly prepared the ground ahead. 
The Pioneers and Infantry Regiment 178 were marching in 
front of us. Near a small village the latter were fired on 
by the inhabitants. About 220 inhabitants were shot and 
the village was burnt — artillery is continuously shooting — 
the village lies in a large ravine. Just now, 6 o'clock in 
the afternoon, the crossing of the Maas begins near Dinant 
* * * All villages, chateaux, and houses are burnt down 
during this night. It was a beautiful sight to see the fires 
all round us in the distance. 

"Aug. 24th. In every village one finds only heaps of 
ruins and many dead. (From the diary of Matbern, Fourth 
Company, Eleventh Jager Battalion, Marburg.) 



"A shell burst near the 11th Company, and wounded 
seven men, three very severely. At 5 o'clock we were 
ordered by the officer in command of the regiment to shoot 
all the male inhabitants of Nomeny, because the population 
was foolishly attempting to stay the advance of the German 
troops by force of arms. We broke into the houses, and 
seized all who resisted, in order to execute them according 
to martial law. The houses which had not been already 
destroyed by the French artillery and our own were set on 
fire by us, so that nearly the whole town was reduced to 
ashes. It is a terrible sight when helpless women and 
children, utterly destitute, are herded together and driven 
into France." (From the diary of Private Fischer, Eighth 
Bavarian Regiment of Infantry, Thirty-third Reserve 
Division.) 



30 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

Other German soldiers, too, we are glad to see, show their 
horror at the foul deeds. 

" The inhabitants have fled in the village. It was horrible. 
There was clotted blood on all the beards, and what faces one 
saw, terrible to behold! The dead, sixty in all, were at 
once buried. Among them were many old women, some old 
men, and a half -delivered woman, awful to see; three children 
had clasped each other, and died thus. The altar and the 
vaults of the church are shattered. They had a telephone 
there to communicate with the enemy. This morning, Sep- 
tember 2, all the survivors were expelled, and I saw four 
little boys carrying a cradle, with a baby five or six months 
old in it, on two sticks. All this was terrible to see. Shot 
after shot! Thunderbolt after thunderbolt! Everything is 
given over to pillage; fowls and the rest all killed. I saw a 
mother, too, with her two children; one had a great wound 
on the head and had lost an eye." (From the diary of Lance- 
Corporal Paul Spielmann, of the Ersatz, First Brigade of 
Infantry of the Guard.) 



* * * In the night the inhabitants of Liege became 
mutinous. Forty persons were shot and 15 houses demol- 
ished, 10 soldiers shot. The sights here make you cry. 

"On the 23rd August everything quiet. The inhabitants 
have so far given in. Seventy students were shot, 200 kept 
prisoners. Inhabitants returning to Liege. 

"Aug. 24th. At noon with 36 men on sentry duty. Sentry 
duty is A 1, no post allocated to me. Our occupation, apart 
from bathing, is eating and drinking. We live like God in 
Belgium." (From the diary of Joh. van der Schoot, re- 
servist of the Tenth Company, Thirty-ninth Reserve In- 
fantry Regiment, Seventh Reserve Army Corps.) 



"August 17th. In the afternoon I had a look at the little 
chateau belonging to one of the King's secretaries (not at 
home). Our men had behaved like regular vandals. They 
had looted the cellar first, and then they had turned their 
attention to the bedrooms and thrown things about all over 
the place. They had even made fruitless efforts to smash 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 31 

the safe open. Everything was topsy-turvy — magnificent 
furniture, silk, and even china. That's what happens when 
the men are allowed to requisition for themselves. I am sure 
they must have taken away a heap of useless stuff simply for 
the pleasure of looting." 

"Aug. 23rd. * * * Our men came back and said that 
at the point where the valley joined the Meuse we could not 
get on any further as the villagers were shooting at us from 
every house. We shot the whole lot — 16 of them. They 
were drawn up in three ranks; the same shot did' for three at 
a time. 

* * * The men had already shown their brutal in- 
stincts; * * * 

"The sight of the bodies of all the inhabitants who had 
been shot was indescribable. Every house in the whole vil- 
lage was destroyed. We dragged the villagers one after 
another out of the most unlikely corners. The men were 
shot as well as the women and children who were in the con- 
vent, since shots had been fired from the convent windows; 
and we burnt it afterwards. 

" The inhabitants might have escaped the penalty by hand- 
ing over the guilty and paying 15,000 francs. 

"The inhabitants fired on our men again. The division 
took drastic steps to stop the villages being burnt and the 
inhabitants being shot. The pretty little village of Gue 
d'Ossus, however, was apparently set on fire without cause. 
A cyclist fell off his machine and his rifle went off. He imme- 
diately said he had been shot at. All the inhabitants were 
burnt in the houses. I hope there will be no more such 
horrors. 

"At Leppe apparently 200 men were shot. There must 
have been some innocent men among them. In future we 
shall have to hold an inquiry as to their guilt instead of 
shooting them. 

"In the evening we marched to Maubert-Fontaine. Just 
as we were having our meal the alarm was sounded — everyone 
is very jumpy. 

"September 3rd. Still at Rethel, on guard over pris- 
oners. * * * The houses are charming inside. The mid- 
dle class in France has magnificent furniture. We found 



32 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

stylish pieces everywhere and beautiful silk, but in what a 
state * * * Good God! * * * Every bit of furni- 
ture broken, mirrors smashed. The Vandals themselves 
could not have done more damage. This place is a disgrace 
to our army. The inhabitants who fled could not have ex- 
pected, of course, that all their goods would have been left 
intact after so many troops had passed. But the column 
commanders are responsible for the greater part of the dam- 
age, as they could have prevented the looting and destruc- 
tion. The damage amounts to millions of marks; even the 
safes have been attacked. 

"Ina solici tor's house, in which, as luck would have it, all 
was in excellent taste, including a collection of old lace and 
Eastern works of art, everything was smashed to bits. 

"I could not resist taking a little memento myself here and 
there. * * * One house was particularly elegant, every- 
thing in the best taste. The hall was of light oak; I found a 
splendid raincoat under the staircase and a camera for 
Felix." (From the diary of an officer in the One hundred 
seventy-eighth Regiment, Twelfth Saxon Corps.) 

But this horror apparently was not shared by the German 
commander in chief, as is evident from the following : 

"order. 

" To the People of Liege. 

"The population of Andenne, after making a display of 
peaceful intentions towards our troops, attacked them in the 
most treacherous manner. With my authorisation, the 
General commanding these troops has reduced the town to 
ashes and has had 110 persons shot. 

"I bring this fact to the knowledge of the people of 
Liege in order that they may know what fate to expect 
should they adopt a similar attitude. 

"Liege, 22nd August, 1914. 

"General von Bulow." 

The following "Order of the Day" shows how the town of 
Huy escaped a like fate. Drunken German soldiers were 
frightened and began to shoot men and burn houses. The 
commanding officer condemned this because it was not 
done by his order and because two German soldiers were 
wounded. It is evident that massacres and arson were per- 
mitted only when commanded by the officers. 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 33 

"Last night a shooting affray took place. There is no 
evidence that the inhabitants of the towns had any arms in 
their houses, nor is there evidence that the people took part 
in the shooting; on the contrary, it seems that the soldiers 
were under the influence of alcohol, and began to shoot in a 
senseless fear of a hostile attack. 

"The behaviour of the soldiers during the night, with very 
few exceptions, makes a scandalous impression. 

"It is highly deplorable when officers or noncommissioned 
officers setliouses on fire without permission or order of the 
commanding, or, as the case may be, the senior officer, or 
when by their attitude they encourage the rank and file to 
burn and plunder. 

"'I require that everywhere strict instructions shall be 
given with regard to the treatment of the life and property 
of the civilian population. 

"I prohibit all shooting in the towns without the order 
of an officer. 

" The miserable behaviour of the men caused a noncom- 
missioned officer and a private to be seriously wounded by 
German bullets. 

" The Commanding Officer, 

"Major von BASSEwrrz." 

In his report of September 12, 1917, to the Secretary of 
State, Minister Whitlock has much to tell of the policy of 
frightfulness. The following passages refer to the subject of 
massacres : 

" Summary executions took place [at Dinant] without the 
least semblance of judgment. The names and number of 
the victims are not known, but they must be numerous. I 
have been unable to obtain precise details in this respect and 
the number of persons who have fled is unknown. Among 
the persons who were shot are : Mr. Def oin, mayor of Dinant ; 
Sasserath, first alderman; Nimmer, aged 70; consul for the 
Argentine Republic, Victor Poncelet, who was executed in 
the presence of his wife and seven children; Wasseige and 
his two sons; Messrs. Gustave and Leon Nicaise, two very 
old men; Jules Monin and others were shot in the cellar of their 
brewery. Mr. Camille Pistte and son, aged 17; Phillippart, 
Piedfort, his wife and daughter; Miss Marsigny. During the 

execution of about forty inhabitants of 

Germans force Dinant, the Germans placed before the con- 

husbands'^xecu- d emne d their wives and children. It is thus 

tions. that Madame Albin who had just given birth 

to a child, three days previously, was brought 
on a mattress by German soldiers to witness the execution of 

18922°— 17 3 



34 GERMAN" WAR PRACTICES. 

her husband; her cries and supplications were so pressing 
that her husband's life was spared." 

"On the 26th of August German soldiers entered various 
streets [of Louvain] and ordered the inhabitants of the houses 
to proceed to the Place de la Station, where the bodies of 
nearly a dozen assassinated persons were lying. Women 
and children were separated from the men and forced to 
remain on the Place de la Station during the whole day. 
They had to witness the execution of many of their fellow 
citizens, who were for the most part shot at the side of the 
square, near the house of Mr. Hemaide. The women and 
children, after having remained on the square for more than 
15 hours, were allowed to depart. The Gardes Civiques of 
Louvain were also taken prisoners and sent to Germany, to 
the camp of Minister, where they were held for several weeks. 

"On Thursday, August 27th, order was given to the in- 
habitants to leave Louvain because the city was to be bom- 
barded. Old men, women, children, the sick, priests, nuns, 
were driven on the roads like cattle. More than 10,000 of 
the inhabitants were driven as far as Tirlemont, 18 kilo- 
meters from Louvain." 

' ' One of the most sorely tried communities was that of the 
little village of Tamines, down in what is known as the 
Borinage, the coal fields near Charleroi. Tamines is a mining 
village in the Sambre; it is a collection of small cottages 
sheltering about 5,000 inhabitants, mostly all poor laborers. 

"The little grave yard in which the church stands bears its 
. mute testimony to the horror of the event. 
Tamines CreS m There are hundreds of new-made graves, each 
with its small wooden cross and its bit of 
flowers; the crosses are so closely huddled that there is 
scarcely room to walk between them. The crosses are alike 
and all bear the same date, the sinister date of August 22d, 
1914." 

"But whether their hands were cut off or not, whether 
they were impaled on bayonets or not, children were shot 
down, by military order, in cold blood. In the awful crime 
of the Rock of Bayard, there overlooking the Meuse below 
Dinant, infants in their mother's arms were shot down 
without mercy. The deed, never surpassed in cruelty by 
any band of savages, is described by the Bishop of Namur 
himself: 

' ' One scene surpasses in horror all others ; it is the fusillade 
of the Rocher Bayard near Dinant. It 

Slaughter of the a pp ears to have been ordered by Colonel 

Rocher bayard. & Meister. This fusillade made many victims 

among the nearby parishes, especially those 

of des Rivages and Neffe. It caused the death of nearly 90 

persons, without distinction of age or sex. Among the vie- 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 35 

tims were babies in arms, boys and girls, fathers and mothers 
of families, even old men. 

"It was there that 12 children under the age of 6 perished 
from the fire of the executioners, 6 of them as they lay in 
their mothers' arms : 

"The child Fievet, 3 weeks old. 

"Maurice Betemps, 11 months old. 

"Nelly Pollet, 11 months old. 

"Gilda Genon, 18 months old. 

"Gilda Marchot, 2 years old. 

"Clara Struvay, 2 years and 6 months. 

"The pile of bodies comprised also many children from 
6 to 1 4 years . Eight large families have entirely disappeared . 
Four have but one survivor. Those men that escaped 
death — and many of whom were riddled with bullets — were 
obliged to bury in a summary and hasty fashion their fathers, 
mothers, brothers, or sisters; then after having been relieved 
of their money and being placed in chains they were sent to 
Cassel [Prussia]." 

Mr. Hugh Gibson, the secretary of our legation in Bel- 
gium, visited Louvain during its systematic destruction by 
the Germans. In A Journal from our Legation in Belgium, 
New York, 1917, pages 164-165, he relates what the Ger- 
man officers told him: 

"It was a story of clearing out civilians from a large 
part of the town, a systematic routing out of men from 
cellars and garrets, wholesale shootings, the generous use 
of machine guns, and the free application of the torch — the 
whole story enough to make one see red. And for our 
guidance it was impressed on us that this would make people 
respect Germany and think twice about resisting her." 

German pastors and professors far from the excitement of 
the firing have defended this policy of frightfulness, e. g. : 

"We are not only compelled to accept the war that is 
forced upon us * * * but are even com- 

irShtfuLess P elled t0 carI T on tnis war witn a cruelty, 

a ruthlessness, an employment of every 
imaginable device, unknown in any previous war." Pastor 
D. Baumgarten, in Deutsche Reden in schwerer Zeit, "Ger- 
man Speeches in Difficult Days." 



' ' The fate that Belgium has called down upon herself is 
hard for the individual, but not too hard for this political 
structure (Staatsgebilde) , for the destinies of the immortal 



36 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

great nations stand so high that they cannot but have the 
right, in case of need, to stride over existences that cannot 
defend themselves, but live, as parasites, upon the rivalries 
of the great." Prof. H. Oncken, in Silddeutsche Monatsheft, 
"South German Monthly." 

Would they have dared to defend such a policy if they 
could have seen the announcement sent out by the parish 
of St. Hadelin with its silent eloquence? 

This is an invitation to a service in memory of 60 men 
and women from one parish, of whom all but two were killed 
by the Germans in the massacre of August 5 and 6, 1914. 
The closing sentences are: 

PRAY TO GOD FOR THE REPOSE OF THEIR SOULS. 

Gentle Heart of Mary, be my refuge. 

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us. 

St. Joseph, patron of Belgium, pray for us. 

St. Hadelin, patron of the parish, pray for us. 

Sainte Barbe, patroness of kindly death, pray for us. 

After reading such ghastly accounts, many of them written 
by German eyewitnesses, and knowing that similar tales 
were published widely in the German newspapers, it is diffi- 
cult to read with patience such words as these : 

"The German Army (in which I of course include the 
Navy) is to-day the greatest institute for moral education 
in the world." 

"The German soldiers alone are thoroughly disciplined, 
and have never so much as hurt a hair of a single inno- 
cent human being." Houston Stewart Chamberlain, in 
Kriegsaufsatze, "War Essays", 1914. 

"We see everywhere how our soldiers respect the sacred 
defencelessness of woman and child." Proi. G. Roethe, in 
Deutsche Beden in Schwerer Zeit, "German Speeches in 
Difficult Days". 

n. HOSTAGES AND SCREENS. 

The massacres described above were a part of the German 
system of frightfulness. Another feature of this system was 
the use of civilians as hostages and for screens. 

In discussing the use of hostages the German War Book 
{Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege) says: 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 37 

"By hostages arc understood those persons who, as security 

or bail for the fulfillment of treaties, promises, 

Views of the or ther claims, are taken or detained by the 
German General • , , ' ., rrn • • • 

Staff, opposing State or its army, ineir provision 

has been less usual in recent wars, as a result 
of which some professors of the law of nations have wrongly 
decided that the taking of hostages has disappeared from the 
practice of civilized nations. * * * 

- "A new application of 'hostage right' was practiced by the 
German Staff in the war of 1870, when it compelled leading 
citizens from French towns and villages to accompany trains 
and locomotives in order to protect the railway communi- 
cations which were threatened by the people. Since the lives 
of peaceable inhabitants were, without any fault on their 
part, thereby exposed to grave danger, every writer outside 
Germany has stigmatized this measure as contrary to the law 
of nations and as unjustified towards the inhabitants of the 
country." 

Although their deeds in the Franco-Prussian war had been 
universally condemned, as they themselves admitted, the 
leaders did not intend to abandon such a useful measure of 
frightfulness. In L' Interprete Militaire the forms were pro- 
vided for such acts in the next war. Both in Belgium and in 
France the Germans have constantly used hostages. The 
evidence is contained in the proclamations of the governing 
authorities and also in the diaries of the German soldiers. A 
few examples from these will illustrate the system which was 
employed. 

A specimen of the arbitrariness and cruelty is furnished by 
the proclamation of Maj. Dieckmann, from which the follow- 
ing sections are presented : 

FROM A PROCLAMATION BY MAJ. DIECKMANN, SEPTEMBER, 1914. 

"4. After 9 a. m. on the 7th September, I will permit the 
houses in Beyne-Heusay, Grivegnee, and Bois-de-Breux to be 
inhabited by the persons who lived in them formerly, as 
long as these persons are not forbidden to frequent these 
localities by official prohibition. 

"5. In order to be sure that the above-mentioned permit 
will not be abused, the Burgomasters of 
m^nl'pS^h^" Beyne-Heusay and of Grivegnee must imme- 
t a ges. diately prepare lists of prominent persons 

who will be held as hostages for 24 hours 
each at Fort Fleron. September 6th, 1914, for the first 
time [the period of detention shall be] from 6 p. m. until 
September 7th at midday. 



38 GERMAN" WAR PRACTICES. 

"The life of these hostages depends on the population of 
the above-mentioned Communes remaining quiet under all 
circumstances. 

"During the night it is severely forbidden to show any 
luminous signals. Bicycles are permitted only between 7 
a. m. and 5 p. m. (German time). 

"6. From the list which is submitted to me I shall desig- 
nate prominent persons who shall be hostages from noon of 
one day until the following midday. If the substitute is 
not there in due time, the hostage must remain another 24 
hours at the fort. After these 24 hours the hostage will 
incur the penalty of death, if the substitute fails to appear. 

" 7. Priests, burgomasters, and the other members of the 
Council are to be taken first as hostages. 

"8. I insist that all civilians who move about in my dis- 
trict * * * show their respect to the German officers 
by taking off their hats, or lifting their hands to their heads 
in military salute. In case of doubt, every German soldier 
must be saluted. Anyone who does not do this must expect 
the German military to make themselves respected by every 
means." 



A PROCLAMATION BY VON BULOW, IN NAMTJR, AUGUST, 1914. 

"1. The Belgian and French soldiers must be delivered 
as prisoners of war before 4 o'clock in front of the prison. 
Citizens who do not obey will be condemned to hard labor 
for life in Germany. 

"The rigorous inspection of houses will commence at 
4 o'clock. Every soldier found will be immediately shot. 

"2. Arms, powder, and dynamite must be given up at 
4 o'clock. Penalty, being shot. 

"Citizens who know of a store of the above must inform 
the burgomaster, under penalty of hard labor for life. 

"3. Every street will be occupied by a German guard, 

who will take ten hostages from each street, 

takes hosta^in WQom t]: } e y wil1 . k ee P under surveillance. 

every street? ^ there is any rising in the street, the ten 

hostages will be shot. 

"4. Doors may not be locked, and at night after 8 o'clock 
there must be lights at three windows in every house. 

"5. It is forbidden to be in the street after 8 o'clock. 
The inhabitants of Namur must understand that there is no 
greater and more horrible crime than to compromise the 
existence of the town and the life of its citizens by risings 
against the German Army. 

"The Commander of the Town, 

"Von Bulow." 

"Namur, 25th August, 1914. (Printed by Chantraine.)" 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 39 

PROCLAMATION POSTED AT BRUSSELS AND ELSEWHERE, 
OCTOBER 5, 1914. 

" September 25th, in the evening, the railroad track and tele- 
graph were destroyed on the line Lovenjoui-Vertryck. .* * * 
" Henceforth the villages situated nearest the spot where 
such events take place — it is of no consequence 
Hostages are w hether they are guilty or not — will be pun- 
toraSS i sh ed without mercy. For this purpose hos- 

tages have been taken from all places in the 
vicinity of railways in danger of similar attacks; and at the 
first attempt to destroy any railway, telegraph, or telephone 
line they will be immediately shot. 

" Furthermore, all troops entrusted with the protection of 
railways have received orders to shoot anyone approaching 
railways or telegraph or telephone lines in a suspicious man- 
ner. 

"The Governor General of Belgium, 

"Baron von der Goltz, 

" Field- Marshal." 



PROCLAMATION TO THE POPULATION OF RHEIMS. 

"In order to ensure sufficiently the safety of our troops 
and the tranquility of the population of Bheims, the persons 
mentioned have been seized as hostages by the Commander 
of the German Army. These hostages will be shot if there 
is the least disorder. On the other hand, if the town remains 
perfectly calm and quiet these hostages and inhabitants will 
be placed under the protection of the German Army. 

"The General Commanding. 

"Rheims, 12th September, 1914." 

Beneath this proclamation there were posted the names of 
81 hostages and a statement that others had 

• t>i. • " also been seized as hostages. The lives of all 
tages in Rneims. ° . 

these men depended m reality upon the inter- 
pretation which the German military authorities might give 
to the elastic phrase, "the least disorder," in the proclama- 
tion. 

Hugh Gibson, in A Journal from our Legation in Belgium, 
page 184, explains what was likely to happen: 

"Another thing is, that on entering a town, they hold the 
burgomaster, the procureur du roi, and other authorities as 
hostages to insure good behavior by the population. Of 
course, the hoodlum class would like nothing better than to 



40 GERMAN WAR PBACTICES. 

see their natural enemies, the defenders of law and order, 
ignominiously shot, and they do not restrain theselves a 
bit on account of the hostages." 

STATEMENT FROM DIARY OF BOMBARDIER WETZEL. 

"Aug. 8th. First fight and set fire to several villages. 

"Aug. 9th. Returned to old quarters; there we searched 
all the houses and shot the mayor and shot one man down 
from the chimney pot, and then we again set fire to the 
village. 

"On the 18th August Letalle (?) captured 10 men with 
three priests because they have shot down from the church 
tower. They were brought into the village of Ste. Marie. 

"Oct. 5th. We were in quarters in the evening at Wille- 

kamm. Lieut. Radfels was quartered in the 

Willekamm & mayor's house and there had two prisoners 

(tied together) on a short whip, and in case 

anything happened they were to be killed. 

"Oct. 11th. We had no fight, but we caught about 20 men 
and shot them." (From the diary of Bombardier Wetzel, 
Second Mounted Battery, First Kurhessian Field Artillery, 
Regiment No. 11.) 

The Germans also found it convenient on many occasions 
to secure civilians, both men and women, who could be forced 
to march or stand in front of the troops, so that the country- 
men of the civilians would be compelled first to kill their own 
people if they resisted the Germans. This usage is illustrated 
in the following : 

letter of lieut. eberlein. 

" October 7, 1914. 

"But we arrested three other civilians, and then I had a 
brilliant idea. We gave them chairs, and we 
ao *JrJ?„* USe then ordered them to go and sit out in the 
middle ol the street. On their part, pitilul 
entreaties; on ours, a few blows from the butt end of the 
rifle. Little by little one becomes terribly callous at this 
business. At last they were all seated outside in the street. 
I do not know what anguished prayers they may have said 
but I noticed that their hands were convulsively clasped the 
whole time. I pitied these fellows, but the method was 
immediately effective. 

"The flank fire from the houses quickly diminished, so that 
we were able to occupy the opposite house and thus to domi- 
nate the principal street. Every living being who showed 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 41 

himself in the street was shot. The artillery on its side had 
done good work all this time, and when, toward 7 o'clock in 
the evening, the brigade advanced to the assault to relieve us 
I was in a position to report that Saint Die had been cleared 
of the enemy. 

"Later on I learned that the regiment of reserve which 
entered Saint Die further to the north had tried the same 
experiment. The four civilians whom they had compelled 
in the same way to sit out in the street were killed by French 
bullets. I myself saw them lying in the middle of the street 
near the hospital." 

"A. Eberlein, 
" First Lieutenant." 

Letter published on the 7th October, 1914, in the "Vora- 
bendblatt" of the Munchner Neueste Nachrichten. 

Minister Whitlock, in his report of September 12, 1917, to 
the Secretary of State, gives an instance of this German prac- 
tice of seeking protection. 

"The Germans attacked Hougaerde on the 18th August; 
the Belgian troops were holding the Gette 
the cassock!" ° Bf i d g e m tne village. The Germans forced 
the parish priest of Autgaerden to walk in 
front of them as a shield. As they neared the barricade 
the Belgian soldiers fired and the priest was killed. After 
the retreat of the Belgians the Germans shot 4 men, burned 
50 houses, and looted 100." 

Hugh Gibson, in A Journal from our Legation in Bel- 
gium, page 155, gives another incident: 

"Two old priests have staggered into the legation 

more dead than alive after having been compelled to walk 
ahead of the German troops for miles as a sort of protecting 
screen. One of them is ill, and it is said that he may die 
as a result of what he has gone through." 

STATEMENTS OF CARDINAL MERCIER AND HIS FELLOW 
BISHOPS. 

"At the time of the invasion Belgian civilians, in twenty 
places, were made to take part in operations of war against 
their own country. At Termonde, Lebbeke, Dinant, and 
elsewhere in many places, peaceable citizens, women, and 
children were forced to march in front of German regiments 
or to make a screen before them. 



42 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

"The system of hostages was carried out with a fierce 
Cardinal Mer- cruelty. The proclamation of August 4th, 
cier's judgment quoted above, declared, without circum- 
on the system of locution: 'Hostages will be freely taken.' 
hostages. "An. official proclamation, posted at Liege, 

in the early days of August, ran thus: 'Every aggression 
committed against the German troops by any persons other 
than soldiers in uniform not only exposes the guilty person 
to be immediately shot, but will also entail the severest 
reprisals against all the inhabitants, and especially against 
those natives of Liege who have been detained as hostages 
in the citadel of Liege by the commandant of the German 
troops.' 

"These hostages are Monsignor Rutten, Bishop of Liege; 
M. Kleyer, burgomaster of Liege; the senators, representa- 
tives, and the permanent deputy and sheriff of Liege." 

The above quotation is taken from An Appeal to Truth, 
addressed Nov. 24, 1915, by Cardinal Mercier and the other 
bishops of Belgium to the cardinals, archbishops, and bishops 
of Germany and Austria-Hungary. 

" Some ten or a dozen American correspondents, of whom 

I was one, witnessed the First German drive 

Will Irwin on through Belgium. Most of us were so 

brutality of Ger- appalled and horrified by what we saw as 

man drive to become anti-German for life." Will 

through Belgium. i^n, i n Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 6, 1917, 

p. 41. 

HI. FINES. 

The contracting nations, including Germany, who signed 
the Conventions of the Second Peace Conference at the 
Hague, 1907, pledged themselves to the following: 

"Article L. No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, 
shall be inflicted upon the population on 

Germany's acco unt of the acts of individuals for which 
promises in Hague ,-, , , -, , . • ,, , 

conventions. tney can not be regarded as jointly and 

severally responsible." 

"Article LIT. Requisitions in kind and services shall not 
be demanded from municipalities or inhabitants except for 
the needs of the army of occupation. They shall be in 
proportion to the resources of the country, and of such a 
nature as not to involve the inhabitants in the obligation of 
taking part in military operations against their own country." 



GEBMAN WAR PRACTICES. 43 

The German authorities have violated these articles from 

the very beginning. As soon as they invaded 

German viola- Belgium, heavy fines were laid upon indi- 

conventions. * vidual communities as reprisals for some act 

against the German Army or its regulations 

which was committed within their boundaries. In An 

Appeal to Truth Cardinal Mercier cites the following cases: 

"Malines, a working-class town, without resources, has 
had a fine of 20,000 marks inflicted on it because the burgo- 
master did not inform the military authority of a journey 
which the cardinal, deprived of the use of his motor car, had 
been obliged to make on foot. In fact, upon the flimsiest 
pretexts heavy fines are inflicted on communes. The com- 
mune of Puers was subjected to a fine of 3,000 marks because 
a telegraph wire was broken, although the inquiry showed 
that it had given way through wear." 

In addition to such arbitrary, sporadic exactions, in De- 
cember, 1914, the Germans demanded 40,000,000 francs 
($8,000,000) a month to be paid by the Belgian Provinces 
jointly. 

Concerning this enormous imposition Cardinal Mercier 
says, in the Appeal to Truth: 

"The essential condition of the legality of a contribution 
of this kind, according to the Hague Convention, is that it 
should bear relation to the resources of the country, article 52. 

"Now, in December, 1914, Belgium was devastated. 
Contributions of war imposed on the towns 

Cardinal Mer- a ^ mnumera ble requisitions in kind had 
cier's comments. -, , T -, m, n , , » ,-, « 

exhausted her. the greater part oi the lac- 
tones were idle, and in those, which were still at work, raw 
materials were, contrary to all law, being freely com- 
mandeered. 

"It was on this impoverished Belgium, living on foreign 
charity, that a contribution of nearly 500,000,000 francs was 
imposed." 

The German authorities were not satisfied with this im- 
poverishing levy. In November, 1915, one 
The crushing mon th before the expiration of the twelve- 
month period fixed for the levy, they decreed 
that this contribution of 40,000,000 francs a month should 
be paid for an indefinite period. In November, 1916, they 
increased the levy to 50,000,000 francs a month. In addi- 
tion, faithful to the method laid down (see page 10). the Ger- 



44 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

man authorities have continued to levy fines upon towns and 
villages for acts committed in their neighborhood, although 
they had no proof that these acts had been committed by any 
inhabitant of the city or village thus fined. (Compare tak- 
ing of hostages, noted above.) 

The German military rulers have also made the families 
responsible for acts committed by or charged against mem- 
bers as is shown in the following examples, which are quoted 
from the Appeal to Truth, cited above. 

"The Belgian Government have sent orders to rejoin the 
army to the militiamen of several classes. 
refonsible 6 * * * All those who receive these orders 
responsi e. ^^ strictly forbidden to act upon them. 

* * * In case of disobedience the family of the militiaman 
will be held equally responsible." 

"A warning of the Governor General, dated January 26th, 
1915, renders the members of the family responsible if a Bel- 
gian fit for military service, between the ages of 16 and 40, 
goes to Holland." 

The Commander in Chief of the German army in Belgium 
posted a proclamation declaring: 

"The villages where acts of hostility shall be committed 
by the inhabitants against our troops will 
Villages made ^ burned. 

"For all destruction of roads, railways, 
bridges, etc., the villages in the neighborhood of the destruction 
will be held responsible. 

"The punishments announced above will be carried out 
severely and without mercy. The whole community will be 
held responsible. Hostages will be taken in large numbers. 
The heaviest war taxes will be levied." 

At the end of the Appeal to Truth Cardinal Mercier says : 

"But we can not say all here, nor quote all. 
"If, however, our readers wish for the proof of the accusa- 
r a- i w tions * * * we shall be glad to furnish 

cierhas n proofs. er " t]iem - Tnere is not in our letter, nor in the 
four annexes [to the Appeal to Truth], one alle- 
gation of which we have not the proofs in our records." 

A striking illustration of the German methods is con- 
tained in the archives of the State Department, because the 
Prince of Monaco appealed to President Wilson against the 
injustice of a fine imposed upon a small and impoverished 
village. The following documents from the State Depart- 
ment archives tell the story. They need no comments. 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 45 

"Paris, Oct. 27, 1914. 
"Secretary of State, 

" Washington. 

"Prince of Monaco called this morning and asked that the 
following case be submitted to the President: 

"Prince states that General von Buelow for weeks has 
been inhabiting Prince's ancestral chateau 
sonne CaSe ° 1S " near Pheims, historical monument, contain- 
ing works of art and family heirlooms; that 
von Buelow has imposed fine of five hundred thousand francs 
on village of Sissonne some miles distant from chateau, be- 
cause broken glass found on road near village. Sissonne 
being unable alone to pay has raised with a number of other 
neighboring villages one hundred twenty-five thousand francs 
but von Buelow has sent two messengers from Sissonne to 
Prince that unless latter pays fine for Sissonne the chateau 
and adjoining village, as well as Sissonne, will be destroyed on 
November first. Prince has answered refusing to pay sum 
now but willing to give his word to German Emperor that 
amount would be paid after removal of danger of fresh war 
incidents. Prince now fearful lest returning messengers, as 
well as male employees on his estate, be shot because of 
refusal to pay. 

"I have arranged meeting this afternoon between Spanish 
Ambassador and Prince, to whom I have suggested that 
matter be presented to German Government through Spanish 
Ambassador at Berlin inasmuch as Prince's threatened 
property is in France. 

"Herrick." 



"Army Headquarters, 

" WarmeriviUe, Sept. 19th, 191^. 
"To the Mayor of the Commune of Sissonne, 

"Sissonne. 
"It has been conclusively proven that the road between 
» Sissonne and the railway station of Montaigu 
i»T7T7°nn (jiwnnn/ was > on September 18th, strewn with broken 

levy on oissonne. 1 ' , j- ,. ' 1 .. , 

glass along a distance ol one kilometre and 
at intervals of 50 metres, for the purpose, no doubt, of im- 
peding automobile traffic. 

" I hold the commune of Sissonne responsible for this act of 
hostility on the part of its inhabitants and I punish the said 
commune by levying upon it a contribution of 500,000 francs 
(five hundred thousand francs) . 

"This sum must be entirely paid into the Treasury of the 
Etape by October 15th. 



46 GERMAN" WAR PRACTICES. 

" The Inspection of the Etape now at Montcornet has been 
directed to enforce execution of this order. 

The General Commander in Chief of the Army, 

"Von Bulow." 



LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE GERMAN EMPEROR. 

Monaco, Oct. 22nd, 1914. 
"Sire: 

"I forward to Your Majesty several documents relating to 
a very grave and urgent matter. 

"The General von Bulow has caused to be occupied since 
one month and a half my residence of Mar- 
Prince of Mo- cha^ situated at five kilometres from the 
peror William. " village of Sissonne. The general has levied 
upon the fifteen hundred inhabitants of this 
poor ruined village a war contribution of five hundred thou- 
sand francs, of which they are unable to pay more than one- 
quarter. Moreover, he has sent to me two emissaries bear- 
ing a document in which he threatens to destroy my property 
and the village of Marchais, over and above that of Sissonne, 
in the event of my not disbursing myself the sum in question 
before the end of the month of October. 

"That is how a Prussian general treats a reigning Prince 
who for 45 years has been a friend to Germany, and who in all 
the countries of the world is surrounded with respect and 
gratitude for his work. 

"In reply to the summons of the General von Bulow I have 
given my word of honor to complete the above contribution 
in order to avert a horrible action accomplished in cold blood, 
but adding that as a sovereign Prince I submit this matter to 
the judgment of the Emperor by declaring that the said sum 
shall be paid when the Chateau de Marchais will be free from 
the danger of intentional destruction. 

"I am, with great respect, Your Majesty's devoted 
servant and cousin, 

"Albert, Prince of Monaco." 



letter addressed to gen. von bulow. 

"Monaco, Oct. 22nd, 191 4. 
"General: 

"To avert from the Commune of Sissonne and that of 
Marchais the rigorous treatment with which you have 
threatened them, I give my word of honor to remit to His 
Majesty the Emperor William, should the war come to an 
end without intentional damage being caused to my resi- 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 47 

dence or to these two communes, the necessary sum to 
complete the amount of five hundred thousand francs 
imposed by you upon Sissonne. 

"As a Sovereign Prince, I wish to deal in this matter with 
the Sovereign who, during fifteen years, called me his friend 
and has decorated me with the Order of the Knight of the 
Black Eagle. 

"My conscience and my dignity place me above fear, as 

also my personal will shall elevate me above 

Prince com- re gret; but should you destroy the Chateau 

™f?t»« ( £,JSrf <*e Marchais which is one of the centers of 
man treatment 01 . i ■ i i • , i i 1 

monuments. universal science and charity, should you 

reserve to this archeological and historical 
gem the treatment you have given to the Cathedral of 
Rheims — when no reprehensible action has been committed 
there — the whole world will judge between you and myself. 
" I tender to Your Excellency the expression of my high 
regard. » 

Albert, Sovereign Prince of Monaco." 

IV. DEPORTATIONS AND FORCED LABOR. 

Until the present war the whole civilized world has boasted 
of its advance in humanity. This advance 
Advance in hu- h ac [ b een marked in many fields, and in none 
August, 1914. had greater progress been made than in the 
protection to be given to the private citizen 
in an invaded country. As far back as 1863, in the Instruc- 
tions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the 
Field, the United States declared: 

"22. Nevertheless, as civilization has advanced during the 

last centuries, so has likewise steadily ad- 

^Y^i ted + ^ tat . es vanced, especially in war on land, the dis- 
treatment of civ- ,. ,. '■ , r , J .-, . .' ■,. . , -, 

ilians 1863. unction between the private individual 

belonging to a hostile country and the hostile 

country itself, with its men in arms. The principle has been 

more and more acknowledged that the unarmed citizens is 

to be spared in person, property, and honor as much as the 

exigencies of war will admit. 

"23. Private- citizens are no longer murdered, enslaved, 
or carried off to distant parts, and the inoffensive individual 
is as little disturbed in his private relations as the commander 
of the hostile troops can afford to grant in the overruling 
demands of a vigorous war. 

"24. The almost universal rule in remote times was, and 
continues to be with barbarous armies, that the private 
individual of the hostile country is destined to suffer every 



48 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

privation of liberty and protection, and every disruption of 
family ties. Protection was, and still is with uncivilized 
people, the exception." 

These declarations were made in the midst of our Civil 

War — one of the world's fiercest conflicts. 

German Gov- A half -century later, after more than 50 
ernment's rever- J ' 

sion to barbarism, years of progress, the German Government has 

gone back to the methods used by "barbar- 
ous armies" and "uncivilized people." It has deliberately 
adopted the policy of deporting men and women, boys and 
girls, and of forcing them to work for their captors; it has 
even compelled them to make arms and munitions for use 
against their allies and their own flesh and blood. 

No other act of the German Government has aroused such 
horror and detestation throughout the civilized world. 
Thousands of helpless men and women, boys and girls, have 
been enslaved. Families have been broken up. Girls have 
been carried off to work — or worse — in a strange land, and 
their relatives have not known where they have been taken, 
or what their fate has been. 

This system of forced labor and deportation embraced the 
whole of Belgium, Poland, and the occupied lands of France. 

The plan for setting forth the essential facts of the depor- 
tations and forced labor is as follows: the documents, that is 
to say, a small fraction of those which could be cited, will be 
allowed to tell the story, and only such comments will be 
added as are needed to enable the reader easily to grasp the 
connection of events. 

BELGIUM. 

" The deportations * * * were the most vivid, shocking, 
convincing, single happening in all our enforced observation 
and experience of German disregard of human suffering and 
human rights in Belgium." Vernon Kellogg in Atlantic 
Monthly, October, 1917. 

A summary of the whole situation, down to January, 1917, 
can be obtained by reading continuously the report of Min- 
ister Whitlock, taken from the files of the State Department, 
which is given in italics on pages 49-50, 54, 55-56, 69-70, 
76-77, 80-81. The insertion, of his report at appropriate 
points has made it possible to avoid all but a minimum of 
repetition. 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 49 

"Legation of the United States of America, 

"Brussels, January 16th, 1917. 
" The Honorable, the Secretary of State, 

Washington. 
"Sir: I have had it in mind, and I might say, on my con- 
Horrifying be- science, since the Germans began to deport 
havior of the Ger- Belgian workmen early in November, to pre- 
mans in Belgium. p are y or ^ g Department a detailed report on 
this latest instance of brutality, but there have been so many 
obstacles in the way of obtaining evidence on which a calm and 
judicious opinion could be based, and one is so overwhelmed 
with the horror of the thing itself, that it has been, and even now 
is, difficult to write calmly and justly about it. I have had to 
content myself with the fragmentary despatches I have from 
time to time sent to the Department and with doing what I 
could, little as that can be, to alleviate the distress that this 
gratuitous cruelty has caused the population of this unhappy 
land. 

"In order to understand fully the situation it is necessary to 

go back to the autumn of 191 A. At the time 

Belgian Govern- we were organizing the relief work, the Comite 

ment wished to National — the Belgian relief organization that 

employed Bel- collaborates with the Commission for Relief in 

gians. Belgium — proposed an arrangement by which 

the Belgian Government should pay to its own 
employees left in Belgium, and other unemployed men besides, 
the wages they had been accustomed to receive. The Belgians 
wished to do this both for humanitarian and patriotic purposes; 
they wished to provide the unemployed with the means of liveli- 
hood, and, at the same time, to prevent their working for the 
Germans. I refused to be connected in any way with this plan, 
and told the Belgian committee that it had many possibilities of 
danger; that not only would it place a premium on idleness, but 
that it would ultimately exasperate the Germans. However, the 
policy was adopted, and has been continued in practice, and on 
the rolls of the Comite National have been borne the names of 
hundreds of thousands — some 700,000, I believe — of idle men 
receiving this dole, distributed through the communes.'' 

' ' The presence of these unemployed, however, was a constant 

temptation to German cupidity. Many times 
itv excited CUP1 " they sought to obtain the lists of the chomeurs 

but were always foiled by the claim that under 
the guarantees covering the relief work, the records of the Comite 
National and its various suborganizations were immune. 
Rather than risk any interruption of the ravitaillement, for 
which, while loath to own any obligation to America, the Ger- 

18922°— 17 i 



50 GERMAN" WAR PRACTICES. 

mans have always been grateful, since it has had the effect of 
keeping the population calm, the authorities never pressed the 
point, other than with the burgomasters of the communes. 
Finally, however, the military party, always brutal, and with 
an astounding ignorance of public opinion and of moral senti- 
ment, determined to put these idle men to work. 

11 General von Bissing and the civil portion of his entourage 
had always been and even now are opposed to this policy and I 
think have sincerely done what they could, first, to prevent its 
adoption, and secondly, to lighten the rigors of its application." 
(Continued on page 54.) 

In the early days of the German advance into Belgium, 
the people had learned to fear the worst. This was par- 
ticularly true in Antwerp. In order to alleviate their fears 
and to obtain guarantees which might hasten the restora- 
tion of settled conditions, Cardinal Mercier secured from the 
German governor of Antwerp promises, and in a circular 
letter dated October 16th, 1914, asked the clergy of the 
Province of Antwerp to communicate them to the people: 

"The governor of Antwerp, Baron von Hoiningen, General 

von Huene, has authorized me to inform you 

. SoIe ?"* P rom " in his name and to communicate by your 

SftVexploitBel- obliging intermediary to our populations 

gians. the three following declarations : 

"(1) The young men need not fear being 
taken to Germany, either to be enrolled into the army or to 
be employed at forced labors. 

" (2) If individual infractions of police regulations are com- 
mitted, the authorities will institute a search for the respon- 
sible authors and will punish them, without placing the re- 
sponsibility on the entire population. 

" (3) The German ana Belgian authorities will neglect 
nothing to see that food is assured to the population." 

These promises were not kept, as Cardinal Mercier and 
his colleagues show by abundant evidence in the Appeal to 
Truth. 

"On March 23rd, 1915, at the arsenal at Luttre the German 
authority posted a notice demanding return to work. On 
April 21st, 200 workmen were called for. On April 27th sol- 
diers went to fetch the workmen from their homes and take 
them to the arsenal. In the absence of a workman, a mem- 
ber of the family was arrested. 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 51 

"However, the men maintained their refusal to work, ' be- 
cause- they were unwilling to co-operate in 
Violation o f ac £ g f war a g ams t their country.' 

ises? 1311 prom " "On April 30th the requisitioned work- 
men were not released, but shut up in the 
railway carriages. 

"On May 4th, 24 workmen detained in prison at Nivelles 
were tried at Mons by a court-martial, 'on the charge of be- 
ing members of a secret society, having for its aim to thwart 
the carrying out of German military measures.' They were 
condemned to imprisonment. 

"On May 8th, 1915, 48 workmen were shut up in a freight 
car and taken to Germany. 

tionl ta " " 0n Ma y 14th > 45 men were deported to 

Germany. 

"On May 18th a fresh proclamation announced that the 
prisoners would receive only dry bread and water, and hot 
food only every four days.' On May 22nd three cars with 
104 workmen were sent towards Charleroi." 

"A similiar course was adopted at Malines, where, by 
various methods of intimidation, the German authorities 
attempted to force the workers at the arsenal to work on 
material for the railways, as if it were not plain that this 
material would become war material sooner or later. 

"On May 30th, 1915, the Governor-General announced 
that he 'would be obliged to punish the town of Malines and 
its suburbs by stopping all co mm ercial traffic if by 10 a. m. 
on Wednesday, June 2nd, 500 workmen had not presented 
themselves for work at the arsenal.' 

"On Wednesday, June 2nd, not a single man appeared. 
Accordingly, a complete stoppage took place of every 
vehicle within a radius of several kilometres of the town." 

"Several workmen were taken by force and kept two or 
three days at the arsenal." 

"The commune of Swevegliem (Western Flanders) was 

punished in June, 1915, because the 350 

Belgians asked workmen a t the private factory of M. 

to maK© barbed y> ■, e -i, -i-l-lj-pj-i 

w i r6i Bekaert refused to make barbed wire for the 

German Army. 
"The following notice was placarded at Menin in July- 
August, 1915: 'By order: From to-day the town will no 
longer afford aid of any description — including assistance to 
their families, wives, and children — to any operatives except 
those who work regularly at military work, and other tasks 
assigned to them. All other operatives and their families 
can henceforward not be helped in any fashion.' 



52 GERMAN" WAR PRACTICES. 

"Similiar measures were taken in October, 1915, at Harle- 
. . . , bekelez-Courtrai, Bisseghem, Lokeren, and 
reS S to work Mons - From Harlebeke 29 inhabitants were 
for German Army, transported to Germany. At Mons, in M. 
Lenoir's factory, the directors, foremen, and 
81 workmen were imprisoned for having refused to work in 
the service of the German Army. M. Lenoir was sentenced 
to five years 7 imprisonment, the five directors to a year each, 
6 foremen to six months, and the 81 workmen to eight 
weeks. 

"The General Government had recourse also to indirect 
methods of compulsion. It seized the Bel- 
with Red^Cross! ^ an ^ e ^ Cross, confiscated its property, and 
changed its purpose arbitrarily. It at- 
tempted to make itself master of the public charities and to 
control the National Aid and Food Committee. 

" If we were to cite in extenso the decree of the Governor 
General of August 4th, 1915, concerning measures intended to 
assure the carrying out of works of public usefulness, and 
that of August 15th, 1915, 'concerning the 
Trickiness of unem ,ployed, who, through idleness, refrain 
oerman rulers oi r i > • j. i j i_ t_ i i j 

Belgium. from work, it would be seen by what tor- 

tuous means the occupying Power attempts 

to attack at once the masters and the men." 

i 

October 12th, 1915, .the German authorities took a long 
step in the development of their policy of forcing the Bel- 
gians to aid them in prosecuting the war. The decree of 
that date reveals the matter and openly discloses a con- 
tempt for international law. 

DECREE OF OCTOBER 12, 1915. 

"Article I. Whoever, without reason, refuses to under- 
take or to continue work suitable to his occupation, and in 
the execution of which the military administration is in- 
terested, such work being ordered by one or more of the 
military commanders, will be liable to imprisonment not 
exceeding one year. He may also be transported to Ger- 
many. 

" Invoking Belgian laws or even international conven- 
tions to the contrary, can, in no case, jus- 
Germans flout tifv the refusal to work. 

aM m ordS al Be^ " 0n the sub J ect °f . tne lawfulness of the 
gians to work for work exacted, the military commandant has 
them. the sole right of forming a decision. 

"Article 2. Any person who by force, 
threats, persuasion, or other means attempts to influence 
another to refuse work as pointed out in Article 1, is liable 



GERMAN" WAR PRACTICES. 53 

to the punishment of imprisonment not exceeding five 
years. 

"Article 3. Whoever knowingly by means of aid given 
or in any other way abets a punishable refusal to work, will 
be liable to a maximum fine of 10,000 marks, and in addi- 
tion may be condemned to a year's imprisonment. 

"If communes or associations have rendered themselves 
guilty of such an offence the heads of the communes will 
be punished. - 

"Article 4. In addition to the penalties stated in Articles 
1 and 3, the German authorities may, in case of need, impose 
on communes, where, without reason, work has been refused, 
a fine or other coercive police measures. 

"This present decree comes into force immediately. 
"Der Etappeinspekteur, 

"Von Unger, 
" Generalleutnant. 

"Ghent, October 12th, 1915." 

Cardinal Mercier's brief comment is as follows: "The 
injustice and arbitrariness of this decree exceed all that 
could be imagined. Forced labor, collective penalties and 
arbitrary punishments, all are there. It is slavery, neither 
more nor less." 

Cardinal Mercier was in error, for the German authorities 

were able to imagine a much more terrible 

October 3,1916, measure. In October, 1916, when the need 

German Govern- f or an additional labor supply in Germany 

ment inaugurates , , . J J , r~\ 

wholesale depor- had become urgent, the German government 

tations. established the system of forced labor and 

deportation which has aroused the detesta- 
tion of Christendom. The reader will not be misled by the 
clumsy effort of the German authorities to mask the real pur- 
pose of the decree. 

THE DECREE OF OCTOBER 3, 1916. 
"decree concerning the limiting of the burdens on public 

CHARITY ..." 

"I. People able to work may be compelled to work even 
outside the place where they five, in case 

camouflage! 61 & tne ^ nave to a PPty to tne charity of others 
for the support of themselves or their de- 
pendents on account of gambling, drunkenness, loafing, 
unemployment, or idleness. 



54 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

"II. Every inhabitant of the country is bound to render 
assistance in case of accident or general danger, and also 
to give help in case of public calamities as far as he can, 
even outside the place where he lives; in case of refusal he 
may be compelled by force. 

"III. Anyone called upon to work, under Articles I or II, 
who shall refuse the work, or to continue at the work 
assigned him, will incur the penalty of imprisonment up 
to three years and of a fine up to 10,000 marks, or one or 
other of these penalties, unless a severer penalty is provided 
for by the laws in force. 

"If the refusal to work has been made in concert or in 
agreement with several persons, each accomplice will be 
sentenced, as if he were a ringleader, to at least a week's 
imprisonment. 

"IV. The German military authorities and Military 
Courts will enforce the proper execution of this decree. 

"The Quartermaster General, Sattberzweig. 
"Great Headquarters, 3d October, 1916." 

The responsibility for this atrocious program rests upon 

the military rulers of Germany, who had 

Hindenburg's labored so zealously to infect the army 

deportations. and the people with the principles of ruth- 

lessness. It is significant that the decree of 

October 3, 1916, followed hard upon the elevation of Hinden- 

burg to the supreme command with Ludendorf as his chief 

of staff. In his long report of January 16, 1917, Minister 

Whitlock says: 

report of minister whitlock (continued). 

" Then, in August, von Hindenburg was appointed to the 

supreme command. He is said to have 

Was Bissing criticized von Bissinq's policy as too mild; 

against deporta- , 7 i r t>- • j. . 

tions? there was a quarrel; von Bissing went to 

Berlin to protest, threatened to resign, but did 
not. He returned, and a German official here said that Belgium 
would now be subjected to a more terrible regime — would learn 
what war was. The prophecy has been vindicated. Recently 
I urns told that the drastic measures are really of Ludendorf'' 's 
inspiration; I do not Tcnow. Many German officers say so." 
(Continued on p. 55.) 

If von Bissing had opposed the policy of deportation when 
his own judgment was overruled, he consented to become 
the "devil's advocate" and defended the system in public. 
Especially instructive is the following conversation reported 
by Mr. F. C. Walcott: 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 55 

VON BISSING'S CONVERSATION WITH MR. WALCOTT. 

"I went to Belgium to investigate conditions, and while 
there I had opportunity * * * to talk one day with Gov- 
ernor General von Bissing, who died three or four weeks ago, a 
man 72 or 73 years old, a man steeped in the 'system,' born 
and bred to the hardening of the heart which that philosophy 
develops. There ought to be some new word coined for 
the process that a man's heart undergoes when it becomes 
steeped in that system. 

"I said to him, 'Governor, what are you going to do if 
England and France stop giving these people money to pur- 
chase food ? ' 

"He said, 'We have got that all worked out and have had 
it worked out for weeks, because we have expected this 
system to break down at any time.' 

"He went on to say, 'Starvation will grip these people in 

30 to 60 days. Starvation is a compelling 

Bissing says force, and we would use that force to compel 

deportation plans ^e ]g e }gi an workingmen, many of them very 

prepared. 7 skilled, to go into Germany to replace the 

Germans, so that they could go to the front 

and fight against the English and the French.' 

-' 'As fast as our railway transportation could carry them, 
we would transport thousands of others that would be fit for 
agricultural work, across Europe down into southeastern 
Europe, into Mesopotamia, where we have huge, splendid 
irrigation works. All that land needs is water and it will 
blossom like the rose.' 

" 'The weak remaining, the old and the young, we would 
concentrate opposite the filing line, and put firing squads 
back of them, and force them through that fine, so that the 
English and French could take care of their own people.' 

"It was a perfectly simple, direct, frank reasoning. It 
meant that the German Government would use any force in 
the destruction of any people not its own to further its own 
ends." (Frederic C. Walcott, in The National Geographic 
Magazine, May, 1917.) 

A brief general view of the character of the deportations 
can perhaps be gained best from the report of Minister 
Whitlock. 

REPORT OF MINISTER WHITLOCK (continued). 

"The deportations began in October in the Etape, at Ghent, 
and at Bruges, as my brief telegrams indicated. The policy 
spread; the rich industrial districts of Hainaut, the mines and 



56 GERMAN" WAR PRACTICES. 

steel works about Cliarleroi were next attacked; now they are 
seizing men in Brabant, even in Brussels, despite some indi- 
cations and even predictions of the civil authorities that the 
policy was about to be abandoned. 

[The etapes were the parts of Belgium under martial law, 

and included the province of western Flanders, part of 

eastern Flanders, and the region of Tournai. The remainder 

of the occupied part of Belgium was under civil government.] 

"During the last fortnight men have been impressed here in 

Brussels, but their seizures here are made evi- 
tionsbegin P ° r & ~ dently with much greater care than in the 

provinces, with more regard for the appear- 
ances. There was no public announcement of the intention to 
deport, but suddenly about ten days ago certain men in towns 
whose names are on the list of chomeurs received summons 
notifying them to report at one of the railway stations on a 
given day; penalties were fixed for failure to respond to the 
summons and there was printed on the card an offer of em- 
ployment by the German Government either in Germany or 
Belgium. On the first day out of about 1,500 men ordered to 
present themselves at the Gare du Midi about 750 responded. 
These were examined by German physicians and 300 were 
taken. There was no disorder, a large force of mounted 
Uhlans keeping back the crowds and barring access to the 
station to all but those who had been summoned to appear. 
The Commission for Relief in Belgium had secured permission 
to give to each deported man a loaf of bread, and some of the 
communes provided warm clothing for those who had none and 
in addition a small financial allowance. As by one of the 
ironies of life the winter has been more excessively cold than 
Belgium has ever known it, and while many of those who pre- 
sented themselves were adequately protected against the cold, 
many of them were without overcoats. The men shivering 

from cold and fear, the parting from weeping 
Pitiable scenes, wives and children, the barriers of brutal 
Uhlans, all this made the scene a pitiable and 
distressing one. 

11 It was understood that the seizures would continue here in 
Brussels, but on Thursday last, a bitter cold day, those that 
had been convoked were sent home without examination. It is 
supposed that the severe weather has moved the Germans to 
postpone the deportations." (Continued on page 69.) 

Cardinal Mercier attempted to persuade the German 
authorities to abandon their terrible plans, reminding them 
of their solemn promises in the past: 



58 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

tory. Numerous workmen have already undergone this 
unhappy lot; more numerous are those who are threatened 
with the same acts of violence. 

"In the name of the liberty of domicile and the liberty of 
__ . , work of Belgian citizens ; in the name of the 

mf!ppe e al. Sm0V " inviolability of families; in the name of 
moral interests which the measures of de- 
portation would gravely compromise; in the name of the 
word given by the Governor of the Province of Antwerp and 
by the Governor General, the immediate representative of 
the highest authority of the German Empire, I respectfully 
beg Your Excellency to be good enough to withdraw the 
measures of forced labor and of deportation announced to 
the Belgian workmen, and to be good enough to reinstate 
in their homes those who have already been deported. 

"Your Excellency will appreciate how painful for me 
would be the weight of the responsibility that I would have 
to bear as regards these families, if the confidence which they 
have given you through my agency and at my request were 
lamentably deceived. 

"I persist in believing that this will not be the case. 

"Accept, Mr. Governor General, the assurance of my very 
high consideration. 

"D. J. Cardinal Mercier, 

11 Arch, of Malines." 

Municipal governments in Belgium appealed to the Ger- 
man authorities to observe their solemn promises. The two 
documents which follow illustrate Belgian appeals and 
German answers. 

RESOLUTION OF THE MUNICIPAL COUNCIL OF TOURNAI, 
OCTOBER 20, 1916. 

"In the matter of the requisition made by the German 
authorities on October 20, 1916 (requisition of a list of work- 
men to be drawn up by the municipality) * * * 

"The municipal council resolves to maintain its attitude 
of refusal. 

"It further feels it its duty to place on record the following: 

"The city of Tournai is prepared to submit unreservedly 
to all the exigencies authorised by the laws and customs of 
war. Its sincerity can not be questioned. For more than 
two years it has submitted to the German occupation, 
during which time it has lodged and lived at close quarters 
with the German troops, yet it has displayed perfect com- 
posure and has refrained from any act of hostility, proving 
thereby that it is animated by no idle spirit of bravado. 



58 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

tory. Numerous workmen have already un4ergone this 
unhappy lot; more numerous are those who are threatened 
with the same acts of violence. 

"In the name of the liberty of domicile and the liberty of 
. t work of Belgian citizens; in the name of the 

ing appeal Sm ° V " inviolability of families; in the name of 
moral interests which the measures of de- 
portation would gravely compromise; in the name of the 
word given by the Governor of the Province of Antwerp and 
by the Governor General, the immediate representative of 
the highest authority of the German Empire, I respectfully 
beg Your Excellency to be good enough to withdraw the 
measures of forced labor and of deportation announced to 
the Belgian workmen, and to be good enough to reinstate 
in their homes those who have already been deported. 

"Your Excellency will appreciate how painful for me 
would be the weight of the responsibility that I would have 
to bear as regards these families, if the confidence which they 
have given you through my agency and at my request were 
lamentably deceived. 

"I persist in believing that this will not be the case. 

"Accept, Mr. Governor General, the assurance of my very 
high consideration. 

"D. J. Cardinal Mercier, 

"Arch, of Malines." 

Municipal governments in Belgium appealed to the Ger- 
man authorities to observe their solemn promises. The two 
documents which follow illustrate Belgian appeals and 
German answers. 

RESOLUTION of the municipal council of tournai, 

OCTOBER 20, 1916. 

"In the matter of the requisition made by the German 
authorities on October 20, 1916 (requisition of a list of work- 
men to be drawn up by the municipality) * * * 

"The municipal council resolves to maintain its attitude 
of refusal. 

"It further feels it its duty to place on record the following: 

"The city of Tournai is prepared to submit unreservedly 
to all the exigencies authorised by the laws and customs of 
war. Its sincerity can not be questioned. For more than 
two years it has submitted to the German occupation, 
during which time it has lodged and lived at close quarters 
with the German troops, yet it has displayed perfect com- 
posure and has refrained from any act of hostility, proving 
thereby that it is animated by no idle spirit of bravado. 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 59 

"But the city could not bring itself to provide arms for use 
against its own children, knowing well that 

C o u n c i 1 of natural law and the law of nations (which is 
SSSalaidnle- the expression of natural law) both forbid 
gal demands. such action. 

'"In his declaration dated September 2, 
1914, the German Governor General of Belgium declared: 
'I ask none to renounce his patriotic sentiments.' 

"The city of Tournai reposes confidence in this declara- 
tion, which it is bound to consider as the sentiment of 
the German Emperor, in whose name the Governor General 
was speaking. In accepting the inspiration of honor and 
patriotism, the city is loyal to a fundamental duty, the lofti- 
ness of which must be apparent to any German officer. 

"The city is confident that the straightforwardness and 
clearness of this attitude will prevent any misunderstanding 
arising between itself and the German Army." 

GERMAN REPLY TO THE RESOLUTION OF THE MUNICIPAL 
COUNCIL OF TOURNAI. 

" Tournai, 23rd October, 1916. 

"In permitting itself, through the medium of municipal 

resolutions, to oppose the orders of the Ger- 

And is rounaly man military authorities in the occupied 

lectured and,-, ,-, J ■ , ■-,, £ r T , 

fined, territory, the city is guilty ol an unexampled 

arrogance and of a complete misunder- 
standing of the situation created by the state of war. 
"The ' clear and simple situation ' is in reality the following : 
"The military authorities order the city to obey. Other- 
wise the city must bear the heavy consequences, as I have 
pointed out in my previous explanations. 

"The General Commanding the Army has inflicted on the 
city — on account of its refusal, up to date, to furnish the 
lists demanded — a punitive contribution of 200,000 marks, 
which must be paid within the next six days, beginning 
with to-day. The General also adds that until such time 
as all the lists demanded are in his hands, for every day in 
arrears, beginning with December 31, 1916, a sum of 20,000 
marks will be paid by the city. 

"Hopfer, Major General, 

" Eiapjpen-Kommandant." 

The Commission Syndicale of Belgian workingmen also 
attempted to induce the German authorities to abandon 
their terrible plans. 



60 german war practices. 

"Commission Syndicale of Belgium, 

"Brussels, 80th Oct., 1916. 
[To the Governor General of Belgium.] 

"Excellency: The measures which are being planned by 
your administration to force the unemployed to work for 
the invading power, the deportation of our unhappy com- 
rades which has begun in the region of the etapes, move most 
profoundly the entire working class in Belgium. 

"The undersigned, members and representatives of the 
great central socialist and independent syndicates of Bel- 
gium, would consider that they had not fulfilled their duty 
did they not express to you the painful sentiment which 
agitate the laborers and convey to you the echo of their 
touching complaints. 

"They have seen the machinery taken from their fac- 
tories, the most diverse kind of raw materials requisitioned, 
the accumulation of obstacles to prevent the resumption of 
regular work, the disappearance one by one of every public 
liberty of which they were proud. 

"For more than two years the laboring class more than 
any other has been forced to undergo the 

Wofk? 1611 re ~ most bitter trials, experiencing misery and 
cite their wrongs p, •, -, '■-, K ,-|, b £ J 

at German hands. often hunger, while its children tar away 
fight and die, and the parents of these chil- 
dren can never convey to them the affection with which their 
hearts are overflowing. 

"Our laboring class has endured everything with the ut- 
most calm and the most impressive dignity, repressing its 
sufferings, its complaints and heavy trials, sacrificing every- 
thing to its ideal of liberty and independence. But the 
measures which have been announced will make the popu- 
lation drain the dregs [of the cup] of human sorrow; the 
proletariat, the poor upon whom unemployment has been 
forced, citizens of a modern state, are to be condemned to 
forced labor without having disobeyed any regulation or 
order. 

"In the name of the families of workmen among which 
the most painful anxiety reigns at present, whose mothers, 
whose fiancees, and whose little children are 
decent trStment' des tined to shed so many more tears, we beg 
your Excellency to prevent the accomplish- 
ment of this painful act, contrary to international law, con- 
trary to the dignity of the working classes, contrary to every- 
thing which makes for worth and greatness in human nature. 

"We beg Your Excellency to pardon our emotion and we 
offer you the homage of our distinguished consideration. 

"(Appended are signatures of members of the National 
Committee and the Commission Syndicale.)" 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 61 

Von Bissing in his reply, November 3rd, practically ad- 
mitted the truth of the complaint by attempting to justify 
the measures protested against. The arguments which he 
used are taken up and refuted in the letter of the Commis- 
sion Syndicale, November 14, which follows : 

"Commission Syndicale of Belgium, 

Brussels, lMh Nov., 1916. 
"To His Excellency Baron von Bissing, 

' ' Governor General in Belgium. 

"Excellency: "The Secretaries and representatives of 
the socialistic and independent labor Unions of Belgium 
have, with a painful disappointment, taken cognizance of 
the answer which you were good enough to make to their 
petition of October 30th, concerning the deportation of la- 
borers to Germany, and it is in the name of the working 
classes as a united, whole that we are making a final effort 
to prevent the consummation of an act", without precedent, 
directed against its liberty, its sentiments, and its dignity. 

"You say that many industrial works have been closed 
on account of the lack of raw materials 

Socialists _ re- bought about by the blockade by the enemy. 
arguments! 55 S Permit us, Excellency, to remind you that 
the allied powers manifested very clearly 
their intention to permit the importation into Belgium 
of raw materials required by our industries, provided, with 
a very natural provision, that no requisitions should be 
made, except those mentioned in Article 52 of the Hague 
Convention, that is to say those necessary to the 'occupy- 
ing army,' and that an international commission, the Com- 
mission for Relief in Belgium, should have the right to super- 
vise the destination of the manufactured products. 

" Instead of agreeing to such a proposal, we have seen the 
occupying authorities systematically remove the machinery, 
implements, machines of all kinds, the engines and raw ma- 
terials, metals, leather, and wool, limit production, aggra- 
vate continually the difficulties of transactions. When com- 
munes or committees have desired to employ workmen with- 
out employment on works of public utility, obstacles have 
been thrown in their way and finally in many cases their 
undertakings have been stopped and broken. In a word, 
as fast as tie most tireless efforts were strained to employ 
as many hands as possible, other men were constantly thrown 
out of work. 



62 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

"You state also that unemployment is caused by the la- 
borers' hostility to work. The whole past of 

4 nd th pr °B dl 7 our working class protests against this accu- 
gian workman. 6 " sation with every bit of energy that still re- 
mains in them. Where is there to be found 
in the whole world a working class which has made of such a 
small country such a great industrial and commercial power ? 
And we, who for the last 25 years have been the enthusiastic 
witnesses of the magnificent efforts of our brother workmen, 
in the matter of their material and moral betterment, we 
proudly affirm that it is not among their ranks that one can 
find men so degraded as to prefer to receive a charitable assist- 
ance which barely furnishes them with sufficient food to an 
honest wage given in remuneration for free and fruitful work. 

" What is true, however, is that the Belgian workmen, con- 
forming to the same article 52 of the Hague Convention 
which only admits requisitions of labor 'for the needs of the 
army of occupation and in case these requisitions do not 
imply an obligation to take part in the war against their 
country/ have refused the most tempting offers, not wishing 
to build trenches nor to repair forts nor to work in factories 
which manufacture war materials. This was their right and 
their duty. Their attitude deserved respect and not the 
most humiliating of punishments. 

"You refer to your decrees of August 15th, 1915, and of 
May 15th, 1916, in which are mentioned the possible punish- 
ment of any workmen who receive support and refuse work 
suited to their capacities and carrying with it a proper wage. 
Those who know with what care and with what minute detail 
the conditions, under which the unemployed have the right 
to receive assistance, have been established might perhaps 
think that these menaces were, to say the least, useless. But 
as you yourself say, these decrees declare in their article 2 
that every motive of refusal to work will be considered valid 
if it is admitted by international law. 

"For these cases of refusal, the German Authorities re- 
served the right to cause these recalcitrants to appear before 
Belgian tribunals and later before German military tribunals. 
It is therefore certain that the unemployed have the right to 
refuse to work for any motive approved by international law. 
When summoned before the tribunal they have the right to 
employ counsel in their defense and to state clearly their 
reasons for refusal. One might, of course, say that it is 
not a question of obliging the workmen to participate in 
military enterprise; but it is only too evident 

i i. La ^ re ^f ^ ee that every Belgian deported to Germany will 

through the Ger- , -, ,i ■'i *3i 5 t~ j. 

man scheme. take the place there ot a man who to-morrow 

will go to reinforce the ranks of the enemy. 

We should like to know, Excellency, whether these tribunals 

carry on their functions. 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 63 

" You fear that continued unemployment may depreciate 
the physical and moral status of the workmen. We, who 
know them, have more confidence in them. We have seen 
them suffer with a stoicism which exists only in proud and 
high souls. Did not the splendid idea come from them, of 
organizing throughout the entire country a vast chain of 
educational work for the unemployed in order to develop 
their technical knowledge and to increase their professional 
value? The Comite National was not, alas, authorized to 
undertake this magnificent enterprise. Is it the idea that it 
is through forced labor, performed with black despair, like 
slaves, that our unhappy brothers will keep up their physical 
and moral energy? 

" You fear also that ' the assistance which they receive will 
at length weigh down Belgian economic life.' 
The Germans We can with difficulty believe that Belgians, 
have no right to ag y OU ga y J2 ave fr^ the smallness of soul to 
talk about unem- -j • J ?■, , £ ,1 i ■,, • » r j 

ployment of Bel- grudge m that form the bitter piece 01 bread 
gians. and the little soup which have formed the 

food of so many working families for so many 
months; and what, after all, do the twelve million francs 
amount to that are distributed each month to from 500,000 to 
600,000 unemployed, in comparison with the destruction, be- 
yond reckoning, of goods and lives which the horrors of a war 
in which it has not the slightest responsibility have cost and 
still cost our country ? With the most unshakable faith in 
our destinies; we, the most nearly interested, know that in 
the near future Flanders and Wallonie will rise again, glorious, 
in history. 

"Excellency, our heart and our reason refuse, then, to 

believe that it is for the good of our class and 

All Belgians ^ avo i(j an additional calamity to our coun- 

understand the , ,i , ,t_ j j. -, J j i i„ 

German scheme, try, that thousands of workers are suddenly 

torn from their families and transported to 
Germany. Public sentiment has not been deceived and in 
reply to the grievous complaints of the victims, there echo 
the indignant protests of the entire population, as expressed 
by its representatives, its communal magistrates, and those 
persons who constitute the highest incarnation of law in our 
country. 

" Furthermore, the arbitrary and brutal manner employed 
in the execution of these sad measures has raised all kinds of 
doubts regarding the object in view: the need, above all, 
is to obtain workmen in Germany, for Germany's profit, and 
for the success of its arms. 

" While at Antwerp they did not take any young men from 
17 to 31 years who were under the regime of control, in the 
Borinage they call all the men from 17 to 50 years of age; 
in Walloon Brabant all men over 17 years, without making 



64 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

any distinction between the employed and unemployed. 
Men of all professions and of all conditions have been taken — 
bakers, who have never ceased to work in our cooperatives 
of the Borinage, for example; mechanics, who always had 
employment; agricultural workmen, merchants * * * At 
Lessines on the 6th instant, 2,100 persons were taken away, 
all workmen up to 50 years of age. Several cases are 
cited where old men with five or six of their sons have been 
exiled thus by force. 

"Distressing scenes occur everywhere. The unhappy 
ones gathered together in the public squares 

The tears of the are ra pidly divided into gangs. They had 
children. 311 been directed to bring a small amount of 

baggage; they_ are taken at once to the 
railway station and loaded in cattle cars. They are not 
allowed to say good-bye to their families. No opportunity 
is given to them to put their affairs in order, even the most 
pressing ones. They do not know where they are going, 
nor for what work, nor for how long. Taken away at the 
beginning of the winter, after two years of privations, 
having no further resources and no means to provide them- 
selves with warm clothing or with other indispensable 
articles, what privations are they going to endure? How 
will they live there ? In what state will they return ? This 
mystery and this anxiety are the cause of the ceaseless tears of 
the mothers and little children. Distress and despair reign 
in the homes. 

"Listen, Excellency, to these tears and these sobs. Do 
not permit our past of liberty and independence to be 
ruined. Do not permit human rights to be violated in its 
holy of holies. Do not permit the dignity of our working 
classes, which has been acquired after so many centuries 
of effort, to be trodden under foot. 

"It is to law and humanity that we appeal, solemnly and 
with the hope of being heard, for we have the profound 
conviction that by our voice, at this tragic hour, the great 
voice of the working class of the entire civilized world 
expresses its sorrow and its protest. 

"Accept, Excellency, the homage of our most distin- 
guished consideration. 

(Here follow the signatures of the Members of the Comite 
National and of the Commission Syndicate.) 

"We transmit this letter and previous correspondence 
to the Ministers and representatives of Foreign powers at 
Brussels, as well as to our comrades of the Commission 
Syndicale des Syndicats in Holland." 



GERMAN WAR PEACTICES. 65 

The files of the State Department contain authentic copies 
of very many such moving protests. The foregoing ones 
are taken from this pathetic collection, and from it may be 
cited, by way of further illustration, some passages from 
two others: 

PROTEST OF BELGIAN MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT. 

" Brussels, 9th November, 1916. 

"To his Excellency, Baron von Bissing, 

' ' Governor General in Belgium. 
"Excellency: It seemed that no suffering could be added 
to those under which we have already been 
Belgian legis- weighed down since the occupation of our 

!™ S rf o re «f e T& e country. Our banished liberty, our de- 

wrongs oi uei- , s . , , , J ' 

gium? stroyed industry and commerce, our raw 

products and instruments of work taken 
out of the country, the public fortune ruined, want succeeding 
to wealth in families formerly most prosperous, privations, 
anxieties, and mourning, * * * 

"Is there need to relate the scenes which the region of the 
etape has been the theater of for several weeks, and which 
are now being reenacted, during the past days, in the terri- 
tory of the Government General, where this scourge threat- 
ens to extend from commune to commune until its victims 
are counted by hundreds of thousands ? The notices posted 
on the walls and reproduced in the papers tell sufficiently 
what it is. Everywhere the same procedure, 
The "summary summary and sorrowful: arrests in mass, men 
procedure T °of the c l assme d arbitrarily among the unemployed, 
Germans. herded together, divided into groups, sent 

toward the unknown. * * * 
"The authorities prefer to give them work in Germany, 
where the representatives of the [German] Industrial Bureau 
promise them 'good wages,' if they consent to work there 
Voluntarily, '" and where they may expect, in case of refusal, 
famine wages. What physical and moral depression is 
counted on in order to force their hand 1 

"True, it has been asserted that the work which is offered 

to them will be nonmilitary in character; but 

Everyone voices have replied on every side: 'in taking 

knows what Ger- foe place of a German workman, the Belgian 
many wants Bel- f ., ^ , '• & ,, 

gian workers for. workman permits Germany to increase the 
numerical forces of its armies.' The most 
odious work is that whose results are used against the father- 
land. To serve Germany is to fight against their own coun- 

18922°— 17 5 



66 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

try. To compel our workmen to do this is nothing else than 
an act of force contrary to international law (referred to by 
Your Excellency in your proclamation of August 15th, 1915), 
and contrary also to the spirit, if not to the text, of the 
Fourth Convention of the Hague of 1907. * * * 

"They adjure Your Excellency to employ with the military 
authorities the high prerogatives which are yours from your 
position to prevent the consummation of an act without 
precedent in the history of modern wars, and they beg you 
to accept the assurance of their most distinguished consider- 
ation. 

[Signatures of Belgian Senators and Deputies.] 

protest of cardinal mercier. 

"Archbishopric of Malines, 

" Malines, 10th November, 1916. 
"Mr. Governor General: 

"I refrain from expressing to Your Excellency the senti- 
ments which have been evoked in me by your letter of reply 
to the letter which I had the honor to address to you on 
October 19th, relative to the deportation of the unemployed. 

"I have recalled with melancholy the words which Your 
Excellency, dwelling upon each syllable, pro- 
German perfidy, nounced in my presence, after your arrival at 
Brussels: 'I hope that our relations will be 
loyal * * * I have received the mission of dressing the 
wounds of Belgium.' 

"My letter of October 19th recalled to Your Excellency the 
engagement taken by Baron von Huene, military governor 
of Antwerp, and ratified a few days later by Baron von der 
Goltz, your predecessor as Governor General at Brussels. 
The engagement was explicit, absolute, unlimited as to 
time : ' The young men need not fear being taken to Germany, 
either to be enrolled in the army or to be employed at forced 
labor. ' 

"This engagement is being violated every day — thousands 
of times in the last fortnight. 

"Baron von Huene and the late Baron von der Goltz did 
not say conditionally, as your despatch of the 26th of Octo- 
ber would seek to imply: 'If the occupation does not last 
longer than two years men fit for military duty shall not be 
taken into captivity;' they said categorically: c Young men, 
and with greater reason, men who have reached an advanced 
age, shall not at any moment of the occupation, either be 
made prisoners or employed at forced labor.' * * * 

"The decrees, posters, and comments of the press, which 
were intended to prepare public opinion for the measures 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 67 

now being taken, pleaded especially two considerations: 

The unemployed, so they declared, are a danger to public 

security; they are a charge upon governmental charity. 

"It is not true, I said in my letter of October 19th, that 

our workmen have troubled, or even any- 

The Belgians where threatened the public peace. Five 

have got no char- m i]}i on Belgians and hundreds of Americans 

^«c° m e er ~ are the astonished witnesses of the dignity 

Ii.la.Uo* lini • t* i* 

and the flawless patience of our working 
class. It is not true that the workmen deprived of work are 
a charge upon the occupying power for the charity which is 
dispensed by their administration. The Comite National, in 
which the occupying government has no active part, is the 
sole purveyor of subsistence to the victims of , enforced 
idleness. * * * 

''Each Belgian workman will liberate a German workman 
who will add one more soldier to the German 

The German army. There, in all its simplicity, is the 
Sians waragafnst fact whicn dominates the situation. The au- 
theix own coun- tnor °f the letter himself feels this burning 
try. fact, for he writes: 'nor is the measure one 

which affects the conduct of war properly 
speaking (proprement dite).' It is, then, connected with the 
war improperly speaking (improprement dite); which can only 
mean that the Belgian workman, although he does not bear 
arms, will free the hands of a German workman who will 
take up the arms. The Belgian workman is forced to cooper- 
ate, in an indirect but evident manner, in the war against 
his country. This is manifestly contrary to the spirit of 
the Hague Conventions. 

"Here is another statement: unemployment is not caused 
either by the Belgian workman or by England; it is brought 
about by the regime of the German Occupation. 

"The occupying government has seized considerable sup- 
plies of raw material intended for our national industry; it 
has seized and shipped to Germany the machinery, tools, and 
metals of our factories and our workshops. The possibility 
of national labor being thus suppressed, there remained one 
alternative to the workman : to work for the German Empire, 
either here or in Germany ; or to remain idle. Some thousands 
of workmen, under the pressure of fright or of hunger, ac- 
cepted, with regret for the most part, work for the enemy ; but 
four hundred thousand workmen and workwomen preferred 
to resign themselves to unemployment, with its privations 
rather than injure the interests of the fatherland ; they lived in 
poverty, with the aid of a meager relief allowed them by the 
Comite national de secours et ^alimentation, under the supervis- 
ion of the protecting ministers of Spain, America, and Holland. 



68 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

Calm, dignified, they bore without a murmur their painful 
lot. In no part of the country was there a revolt or even 

the semblance of one. Employers and em- 
No disorder is pi ovees awaited with patience the end of our 
caused by Belgi- f J . j tit i.-i .i 

ans> J b long martyrdom. Meanwhile, the commu- 
nal administrations and private initiative 
endeavored to alleviate the undoubted inconveniences of 
unemployment. But the occupying power paralyzed their 
efforts. The Comite National attempted to organize a pro- 
fessional school for the use of the unemployed. This practi- 
cal instruction, respectful of the dignity of our workmen, was 
meant to keep up their skill, increase their capacity for work, 
and prepare for the restoration of the country. Who op- 
posed this noble movement, the plan of which had been 
elaborated by our large manufacturers ? Who ? The occu- 
pying government. 

" Notwithstanding all this, the communes made every 

effort to give work to the unemployed upon 

Communes not undertakings of public utility; but the gov- 

work for° uuoem- ernor general made these enterprises depend 

ployed. upon permission which, as a general rule, he 

refused. There are numerous cases, I am 
assured, where the General Government authorized under- 
takings of this kind upon the express condition that they 
should not be undertaken by unemployed. 

"They were seeking to create unemployment. They were 
recruiting the army of the unemployed. * * * 

"The letter of October 26th says that the first responsi- 
bility for the unemployment of our workmen rests upon 
England, because she has not allowed raw materials to enter 
Belgium. 

"England generously allows foodstuffs to enter Belgium 

F for the revictualling [of the country], under 

blame. 311 tne . control of neutral States — Spain, the 

United States, and Holland. She would al- 
low raw materials necessary for industry to enter the coun- 
try under the same control if Germany were willing to agree 
to leave them to us, and not to seize the finished products of 
our industrial work. 

"But Germany, by various proceedings, notably by the 

organization of its Centrales, over which 
BeMan an and r °in- ! ie i tner tne Belgians nor our protecting min- 
flicts privations, isters can exercise any efficacious control, 

absorbs a considerable portion of the prod- 
ucts of agriculture and of the industry of our country. 
The result is a considerable increase in the cost of living, 
which causes painful privations for those who have no 
savings. * * * 



GERMAN WAR PEACTICES. 69 

"Deportation is slavery, and tho heaviest penalty of the 
. penal code after that of death. Has Bcl- 

slavery rtatl ° n 1S S mm > wno never did you any wrong, de- 
served at your hands this treatment which 
cries to heaven for vengeance ? 

"Mr. Governor General, in the beginning of my letter I 
recalled the noble words of Your Excellency: 'I have 
come into Belgium with the mission of dressing the wounds 
of your country.' 

"If Your Excellency could penetrate into the homes of 
workingmen, as we priests do, and hear the lamentations of 
wives and mothers whom your orders cast into mourning 
and into dismay, you would realize far better that the wound 
of the Belgian people is gaping. 

"Two years ago, we hear people say, it was death, pillage, 
fires, but it was war! To-day it is no longer 
tion°of Germans" war > ** * s co ^ calculation, intentional de- 
struction, the victory of force over right, the 
debasement of human personality, a cry of defiance to hu- 
manity. 

"It depends upon you, Excellency, to silence these cries 
of a revolted conscience; may the good God, whom we call 
upon with all the ardor of our soul for our oppressed people, 
inspire you with the pity of the good Samaritan! 

"Accept, Mr. Governor General, the homage of my highest 
consideration. 

D. J. Card. Mercier, 

il Arch. of Malines." 

In less moving phrases, but in deadly corroboration, the 
continuation of the report of Minister Whitlock says: 

REPORT OF MINISTER WHITLOCK (continued). 

" The rage, the terror, and despair excited by this measure all 
over Belgium were beyond anything we had witnessed since the 
day the Germans poured into Brussels. The delegates of the 
Commission for Relief in Belgium, returning to Brussels, told 
the most distressing stories of the scenes of cruelty and sorrow 
attending the seizures. And daily, hourly almost, since that 

time appalling stories have been related by 
storie P of Gerrna^ Belgians coming to the Legation. It is impos- 
behavior. s ^ e f or us t° verify them, first because it is 

necessary for us to exercise all possible tact in 
dealing with the subject at all, and secondly because there is no 
means of communication between the Occupations-Gebiet and 
the Etappen-Gebiet. Transportation everywhere in Belgium 
is difficult, the vicinal railways scarcely operating any more 



70 GERMAN WAE PRACTICES. 

because of the lack of oil, while all the horses have been taken. 
The people who are forced to go from one village to another must 
do so on foot or in vans drawn by the few miserable horses thai 
are left. The wagons of the breweries, the one institution that 
the Germans have scrupulously respected, are hauled by oxen. 
u The well-known tendency of sensational reports to exag- 
gerate themselves j especially in time of war, and in a situation 
like that existing here, with no newspapers to serve as a daily 
clearing house for all the rumours that are as avidly believed as 

they are eagerly repeated, should of course be 
A foul deed. considered; but even if a modicum of all that 

is told is true there still remains enough to 
stamp this deed as one of the foulest that history records. 

"I am constantly in receipt of reports from all over Belgium, 
that tend to bear out the stories one constantly hears of brutality 
and cruelty. A number of men sent back to Mons are said to 
be in a dying condition, many of them tubercular. At Malines 
and at Antwerp returned men have died, their friends asserting 
that they have been victims of neglect and cruelty, of cold, of 
exposure, of hunger." (Continued on page 76.) 

A vivid sketch of the deportations from Mons, drawn by 
a participant, may well he cited here: 

"I will take the 18th of November of last year [1916]. A 

week or so before that a placard was placed 

"The^woes of on fa Q wa n s telling my capital city of Mons 

that in seven days all the men ol that city 

who were not clergymen, who were not priests, who did not 

belong to the city council, would be deported. 

"At half past five, in the gray of the morning on the 18th 
of November, they walked out, six thousand two hundred 
men at Mons, myself and another leading them down the 
cobblestones of the street and out where the rioting would 
be less than in the great city, with the soldiers on each side, 
with bayonets fixed, with the women held back. 

" The degradation of it! The degradation of it as they 
walked into this great market square, where the pens were 
erected, exactly as if they were cattle — all the great men of 
that province — -the lawyers, the statesmen, the heads of the 
trades, the men that had made the capital of Hainaut glorious 
during the last twenty years. 

" There they were collected; no question of who they were, 
whether they were busy or what they were doing, or what 
their position in life. 'Go to the right! Go to the left! 
Go to the right ! ' So they were turned to the one side or the 
other. 

"Trains were standing there ready, steaming, to take them 
to Germany. You saw on the one side the one brother taken, 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 71 

the other brother left. A hasty embrace and they were 
separated and gone. You had here a man on his knees 
before a German officer, pleading and begging to take his 
old father's place; that was all. The father went and the 
son stayed. They were packed in those trains that were 
waiting there. 

"You saw the women in hundreds, with bundles in their 
hands, beseeching to be permitted to approach the trains, to 
give their men the last that they had in life between them- 
selves and starvation — a small bundle of clothing to keep 
them warm on their way to Germany. You saw women 
approach with a bundle that had been purchased by the sale 
01 the last of their household effects. Not one was allowed to 
approach to give her man the warm pair of stockings or the 
warm jacket, so there might be some chance of his reaching 
there. Off they went!" John H. Gade, in The National 
Geographic Magazine, May, 1917. 

The Belgian women sent a touching appeal to Minister 
Whitlock: 

the appeal of the belgian women. 

"Brussels, 

""November 18, 1916, Ifi Rue de la Madeleine. 
" His Excellency Mr. Brand Whitlock, 

Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipo- 
tentiary of the United States of America. 
"Mr. Minister: 

"From the depths of our well of misery our supplication 
rises to you. 

"In addressing ourselves to you, we denounce to your 
Government, as well as to our sisters, the women of the 
nation which you represent in our midst, the criminal abuse 
of force of which our unhappy and defenseless people is a 
victim. 

"Since the beginning of this atrocious war we have looked 
on impotently and with our hearts torn with every sorrow 
at terrible events which put our civilization back into the 
ages of the barbarian hordes. 

"Mr. Minister, the crime which is now being committed 
under your eyes, namely, the deportation 

No shadow of Q f thousands of men compelled to work on 
excuse for depor- -t , ,t_ * » ,, . 

tations. enemy soil against the interests ol their 

country, can not find any shadow of excuse 
on the ground of military necessity, for it constitutes a viola- 
tion by force of a sacred right of human conscience. 

''Whatever may be the motive, it can not be admitted 
that citizens may be compelled to work directly or indi- 
rectly for the enemy against their brothers who are fighting. 



72 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

"The Convention of The Hague has consecrated this 
principle. 

"Nevertheless, the occupying power is forcing thousands 
of men to this monstrous extremity, which is contrary to 
morals and international law, both these men who have 
already been taken to Germany and those who to-morrow 
will undergo the same fate, if from the outside, from neutral 
Europe and the United States, no help is offered. 

"Oh! The Belgian women have also known how to carry 

The women of out their duty in the hour of danger; they 
Belgium have kept have not weakened the courage of the 
back their tears, soldiers of honor by their tears. 

^They have bravely given to their country those whom 
they loved. * * * The blood of mothers is flowing on the 
battle fields. 

"Those who are taken away to-day do not go to perform 
a glorious duty. They are slaves in chains who, in a dark 
exile, threatened by hunger, prison, death, will be called 
upon to perform the most odious work — service to the enemy 
against the fatherland. 

"The mothers can not stand by while such an abomina- 
tion is taking place without making their voices heard in 
protest. 

"They are not thinking of their own sufferings, their own 
moral torture, the abandonment and the misery io which 
they are to be placed with their children. 

"They address you in the name of the inalterable rights 

of honor and conscience. 
The rights of « j^ j^g fo een sa {^ that women are 'all pow- 
nonor ana con- _j i t . » r 

science. erful suppliants.' 

"We have felt authorized by this saying, 
Mr. Minister, to extend our hands to you and to address to 
your country a last appeal. 

"We trust that in reading these Hues you will feel at 
each word the unhappy heartbeats of the Belgian women 
and will find in your broad and humane sympathy impera- 
tive reasons for intervention. 

"Only the united will of the neutral peoples energetically 
expressed can counterbalance that of the German au- 
thorities. 

"This assistance which the neutral nations can and, 
therefore, ought to lend us, will it be refused to the op- 
pressed Belgians ? 

"Be good enough to accept, Mr. Minister, the homage of 
our most distinguished consideration. 

(Signed by a number of Belgian women and 24 societies.) 

The United States Government did not fail to respond to 
this touching appeal and to others of a similar nature. The 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 73 

American Embassy at Berlin promptly took up the burning 
question of the deportations with the Chancellor and other 
representatives of the German Government. In an inter- 
view with the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 
Mr. Grew was handed an official statement of the German 
plans, which is, in translation, as follows: 

THE GERMAN MEMORANDUM ON BELGIAN "UNEMPLOYMENT." 

"Against the unemployed in Belgium, who are a burden 
to public charity, in order to avoid friction 

More German arising therefrom, compulsory measures are 
camouflage. ^ ^ Q adopted to make them work so far as 

they are not voluntarily inclined to work, in accordance 
with the regulation issued May 15, 1916, by the Governor 
General. In order to ascertain such persons the assistance 
of the municipal authorities is required for the district of 
the Governor General in Brussels, while in the districts out- 
side of the General Government, i. e., in the provinces of 
Flanders, lists were demanded from the presidents of the 
local relief committees containing the names of persons 
receiving relief. For the sake of establishing uniform pro- 
cedure the competent authorities have, in the meantime, 
been instructed to make the necessary investigations re- 
garding such persons also in Flanders through the municipal 
authorities; furthermore, presidents of local relief com- 
mittees who may be detained for having refused to furnish 
such lists will be released." 

Mr. Grew pointed out that the deportations were a breach 
of faith and would injure the German cause abroad. In his 
official summary of the negotiations which he carried on he 

says: 

"I then discussed in detail with the Under Secretary of 
M G . State for Foreign Affairs the unfortunate 

out that r Germany impression which this decision would make 
excites public abroad, reminding him that the measures 
opinion against were in principle contrary to the assurances 
her - given to the Ambassador by the Chancellor 

at General Headquarters last spring and dwelling on the 
effect which the policy might have on England's attitude 
towards relief work in Belgium. I said I understood that 
the measures had been promulgated solely by the military 
government in Belgium and that I thought the matter 
ought at least to be brought to the Chancellor's personal 
attention in the light of the consequences which the new 
policy would entail. Herr Zimmermann intimated in reply 



74 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

that the Foreign Office had very little influence with the 
military authorities and that it was unlikely that the new 
policy in Belgium could be revoked. He stated, however, 
m answer to my inquiry, that he would not disapprove of my 
seeing the Chancellor about the matter." 

Mr. Grew accordingly took up the whole question with 
Mr Grew ap- * ne Chancellor, and among other arguments 
peals to the Chan- urged the promises which the German Go vern- 
ment had solemnly made to the Belgian 
civilians through Baron von Huene and Baron von der Goltz. 
(These pledges are set forth in detail in Cardinal Mercier's 
letter of October 19th, 1916, quoted in full on preceding 
pages.) Mr. Grew found it impossible to persuade the Chan- 
cellor to secure the abandonment of the policy of deporta- 
tions, and thereupon urged that the policy shou-d be 
modified. His formal statement of this phase of the negotia- 
tions is as follows : 

"The points of amelioration which I then suggested as a 
concession to Belgian national feeling and foreign opinion 
were as follows: 

"1. Only actual unemployed to be taken, involving a 
more deliberate and careful selection. 

"2. Married men or heads of families not to be taken. 

"3. Employees of the Comite National not to be taken. 

"4. The lists of the unemployed not to be required of the 
Belgian authorities, but to be determined 
and asks certain by the German authorities themselves, as a 
concessions concession to Belgian national feeling, and 

the Belgians, who had already been im- 
prisoned for refusing to supply these lists, released. 

"5. Deported persons to be permitted to correspond with 
their families in Belgium. 

"6. Places of work or concentration camps of deported 
persons to be voluntarily opened by the German Govern- 
ment to inspection by neutral representatives. 

"A few days later Count Zech, the Chancellor's adjutant, 
called on me and communicated to me informally and 
orally the following replies to the various suggestions which 
I had made for concessions and points of amelioration: 

"1. Only actual unemployed were to be taken. The 
but with slight selections would be made in a careful and 
success. deliberate manner. 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 75 

"2. Married men or heads of families could not in principle 
be exempted, but each case would be considered carefully 
on its merits. 

"3. Employees of the Comite National are regarded as 
actually employed and therefore exempt. 

"4. It was essential that the Belgian authorities should 
cooperate with the German authorities in furnishing lists 
of unemployed, in order to avoid mistakes. Only one 
Belgian had been imprisoned for refusing to give such lists, 
and orders had now been given for his release. 

"5. Deported persons would be permitted to correspond 
with their f amilies in Belgium. 

"6. Places of work and concentration camps would in 
principle be open to inspection by Spanish diplomatic 
representatives. 

American inspection might also be informally arranged if 
desired. 

?JC 5|S • f|C 3j! 3jS 

"On December 2nd, the Minister at Brussels communi- 
cated to me the text of a telegram which he had sent to the 
Department on November 28th, stating that he had been 
encouraged by the report of the results of my interview with 
the Chancellor. * *- *" 

The telegram to which Mr. Grew refers was the following : 

MINISTER WHITLOCK'S TELEGRAM OF NOVEMBER 28, 1916. 

"Brussels, via The Hague, November 28, 1916. 
"Secretary of State, 

" Washington. 

"We are naturally encouraged by Grew's telegrams con- 
cerning his conversations with the Chancellor. 

Germans are de- j t j s p r0D able that the orders [for softening 
porting the skilled ,-, - r » ,-■ ■, , ,. -, S , * 

Belgian workmen. the rigors ol the deportationsl have not yet 
been put into effect, as the recruiting of Bel- 
gian workmen continues without distinction as between the 
employed and unemployed. I have received creditable in- 
formation that choice is made with great rapidity, which 
allows no time for examination. Mayor in the Province of 
Namur had given a list of unemployed as one hundred. 
Practically none of the persons in this list were taken by the 
Germans, but from the same district hundreds of employed 
were taken. Apparently the choice is based entirely on the 
skill and physical fitness of the workmen. There is a great 
demand for blacksmiths and iron workers. The identifica- 
tion cards from the Commission for Relief in Belgium issued 
to men working for the Comite National were respected in 
Antwerp ; nine men holding them were taken at Mons ; over 



76 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

thirty at Namur, and a few each day in various parts of the 
country. Over forty thousand are engaged in various de- 
partments of relief work, however, and this is but a small per- 
centage. It is reliably reported that very bad conditions 
exist in the Province of Valenciennes, and that many men 
have been taken there. They have been without food for 
sixty-three hours and have no blankets. Apparently they 
have been deprived of food in order to oblige them to work 
for the Germans. 

"Whitlock, 
"American Minister." 

The American minister and the representatives of other 
powers were able to secure some lessening of the severity of 
the deportations. Minister Whitlock says: 

REPORT OF MINISTER WHITLOCK (continued). 

" We have, of course, done all that was in our power to 
ameliorate the conditions without in any way 
Neutral repre- seeming officially to intervene. I have already 
sentatives are al- re <p rte(L to the Department the conversations 
reconsideration of I have had with the officials. Recently I 
special cases. induced the Political Department to request 
that we bring to their attention any case of 
flagrant injustice, and on the basis of this admission we have 
been sending from time to time to the German Authorities, the 
names of certain deported Belgians who were working at the 
time of their seizure and therefore did not come within the pur- 
view of the rule laid down by the German Government that the 
unemployed should be deported. Other neutral Legations in 
Brussels have done the same, and the work has assumed pro- 
portions that are so large that I fear they may defeat its ends. 
The Legations of Spain and Holland have organized, similar 
bureaus, and so many requests for repatriation are received 
that I have been compelled to rent rooms in a vacant house, 
across the street from the Legation in the rue BeUiard, to carry 
on the work. The necessary staff and supplies for the work 
have been furnished by the Comite National, which has organ- 
ized a central bureau that investigates all reports received by 
the Legations in order to determine whether or not the persons 
mentioned have received financial assistance since the war, 
and, as well, to avoid duplication in representations. Inas- 
. much as it is difficult to make exceptions, I 

high figures. "* ° f ear > as I sa '^ / oe fo r Vj that the very mass of 
these requests will prevent their being exam- 
ined with any care. So far as we are able to determine, about 
100,000 have been deported, and of those less than 2,000 have 
returned. 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 77 

" The Spanish Legation which, because of the fact that Spain 
is charged with the protection of Belgian interests in Germany, 
claims precedence in this matter, * * * makes a demand for 
the return of each and every one who applies, and sends in 
about two hundred names each day. The Dutch Legation 
* * * forwards each request that is presented, and, owing to 
the fact that after the fall of Antwerp assurances were given by 
the German Authorities through the Butch Government to 
Belgian refugees in Holland that they would not be deported 
should they return to Belgium, they are receiving a great many. 
I am told that they submit over fifteen hundred each day. * * * 

" We have a great many requests, and although we try not to 
discriminate we attempt to pick out the most deserving cases, 
though now thai I have written that phrase I feel a certain shame 
in it because all the cases are deserving. 

"I have had requests from the burgomasters of ten com- 
munes from La Louviere, asking that permis- 

Germans rarely s i on oe obtained to send to the deported men 
ageiTtoreacrTde- ^ n Germany packages of food similar to those 
ported Belgians, that are being sent to prisoners of war. Thus 
far the German authorities have refused to 
permit this except in special instances, and returning Belgians 
claim that even when such packages are received they are used 
by the camp authorities only as another means of coercing them, 
to sign the agreements to work. 

"It is said that, in spite of the liberal salary promised those 
who would sign voluntarily, no money lias as yet been received 
in Belgium from workmen in Germany. " (Concluded on 
pp. 80-81.) 

The American Government was not content with, informal 
recommendations to the German Government, and on 
December 5, 1916, the American representative at Berlin 
laid this formal protest before the German chancellor: 

FORMAL PROTEST OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. 

"The Government of the United States has learned with 
the greatest concern and regret of the 
A solemn pro- p ij C y f the German Government to deport 
States/ m e irom Belgium a portion of the civilian popu- 
lation with the result of forcing them to 
labor in Germany, and is constrained to protest in a friendly 
spirit but most solemnly against this action which is in 
contravention of all precedent and those humane principles 
of international practice which have long been accepted 
and followed by civilized nations in their treatment of non- 
combatants in conquered territory. Furthermore, the 



78 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

Government of the United States is convinced that the effect 
of this policy if pursued will in all probability be fatal to 
the Belgian relief work, so humanely planned and so suc- 
cessfully carried out, a result which would be generally de- 
plored and which, it is assumed, would seriously embarrass 
the German Government." 

This protest was followed by those of the Pope, the King 
of Spain, the Government of Switzerland, and 

Other neutrals other neutrals. They were of no avail, except, 
protest. perhaps, to lead the German authorities to 

draw a tighter veil over their detestable pro- 
ceedings. But the evidence has in some measure come 
through, although the full facts will not be known until the 
liberation of heroic Belgium. 

In the Norddeutsclie AUgemeine Zeitung of December 2, 
1916, the following protests appeared, made, respectively, 
by Socialist Deputy Haase and Deputy Dittmann, members 
of the Reichstag: 

PROTESTS AGAINST DEPORTATIONS HEARD IN REICHSTAG. 

"Thousands of workmen in the occupied territory have 
been compelled to forced labor; we earnestly ask the gov- 
ernment to restore to these workmen their liberty, especially 
in Belgium. In truth, we [the Germans] find no sympathy 
in neutral countries; even the Pope has made a protest 
against this procedure, and several neutral states have done 
the same. Common sense itself demands that we abandon 
this procedure which moreover is in opposition to the Hague 
Convention to which we have agreed. 

"In opposition to the Secretary of State, I must recall 
that when formerly the Belgian workmen who had fled to 
Holland returned to Belgium, Governor General von Bissing 
promised that these Belgian workmen would under no cir- 
cumstances be deported to Germany. This reassuring 
promise has not been kept." 

Ambassador Gerard's interesting testimony appears in his 
recent book: 

AMBASSADOR GERARD'S EVIDENCE. 

'The President [during my visit to America in 1916] 

impressed upon me his great interest in the 

American indig- Belgians deported to Germany. The action 

nation at deporta- £ m r . ., J , , <• 

t i 0ns _ oi Germany m thus carrying a great part of 

the male population of Belgium into virtual 
slavery had roused great indignation in America. As the 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 79 

revered Cardinal Farley said to me a few days before my 
departure, 'You have to go back to the times of the Medes 
and the Persians to find a like example of a whole people 
carried into bondage.' 

"Mr. Grew had made representations about this to the 
Chancellor and, on my return, I immediately took up the 
question. 

"I was informed that it was a military measure, that 
Ludendorf had feared that the British would 
Gerard not per- b rea k through and overrun Belgium and 
deported Belgians. that the military did not propose to have a 
hostile population at their backs who might 
cut the rail lines of communication, telephones and tele- 
graphs, and that for this reason the deportation had been 
decided on. I was, however, told I would be given permis- 
sion to visit these Belgians. The passes, nevertheless, which 
alone made such visiting possible were not delivered until a 
few days before I left Germany. 

" Several of these Belgians who were put to work in Berlin 

managed to get away and come to see me. 

Some of them They gave me a harrowing account of how 

they had been seized in Belgium and made 

to work in Germany at making munitions to be used probably 

against their own friends. 

" I said to the Chancellor, ' There are Belgians employed in 
making shells contrary to all rules of war and The Hague 
Conventions.' He said, 'I do not believe it.' I said, 'My 
automobile is at the door. I can take you, in four minutes, 
to where thirty Belgians are working on the manufacture 01 
shells.' But he did not find time to go. 

"Americans must understand that the Germans will stop 
at nothing to win this war, and that the only thing they 
respect is force." James W. Gerard, My Four Years in Ger- 
many, 1917, pp. 351-52. 

A similar point of view is expressed in an article entitled 
"Vae Victis" from the Hungarian newspaper Nepszawa of 
Budapest (quoted in K. G. Ossiannilsson, Militarism at Work 
in Belgium and Germany, 1917, pp. 53-54). 

HUNGARIAN OPINION ON DEPORTATIONS. 

"Mechanical skill, and especially qualified mechanical 
skill, is for the moment a more important factor than usual, 
and as it must be obtained where it can be obtained, Belgium 
has had to suffer in accordance with the old saying which 
always holds good: Vae victis (woe to the vanquished). In 
Poland mechanical skill and the arms which exist there are 
mobilized under 'the glorious and fortunate banners of 
Poland'; in Belgium under 'the banner of necessity.' " 



80 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

u * * * Yhe question remains: for what kind of work 
will the Germans use the Belgians ? * * * 

The Germans every kind of work in Germany is war work, 
are using the Bel- w h e ther it is called agricultural or industrial 
work. ^ work - As tne deported Belgians have not 

given their consent, their use is contrary to 
international law, and the policy of the Germans in Belgium 
and Poland is equally to be deplored. Instead of aiming at 
bringing us nearer peace, it serves to embitter our opponents 
and to arouse more hatred towards us amongst the neutrals. 
Many times and more and more we have had occasion to 
observe that the neutrals show more sympathy for Belgium 
than for any other belligerent." 

The news dispatches indicate that the deportation and 
forced labor of Belgians still continue. In 
Belgians still a dispatch from Havre (New York Evening 
September^ 1917*. Post, September 13, 1917) it is stated: "The 
removal- of the civilian population of Bel- 
gium continues, according to advices received here. The 
town of Roulers, immediately behind the battle line in 
Flanders, has been evacuated completely. Ostend is being 
emptied gradually, and two thousand persons already have 
been sent from Courtrai." In another dispatch from Havre 
(Washington Post, September 24, 1917) it is stated that 
"the German military authorities at Bruges, Belgium, are 
conscripting forcibly all the boys and men of that city be- 
tween the ages of 14 and 60 to work in munition facto- 
ries and shipyards. The rich and poor, shopkeepers and 
workmen, all are being taken, only the school-teachers, doc- 
tors, and priests escaping." 

REPORT OF MINISTER WHITLOCK (concluded) . 

"One interesting result of the deportations remains to be 
noted, a result that once more places in relief 



German capac- ^ Q erman capacity for blundering, almost as 
great as the German capacity for cruelty. Until 



ity for blunder- 



the deportations were begun there was no in- 
tense hatred on the part of the lower classes, i. e., the working- 
men and the peasants. The old Germans of the Landsturm had 
been quartered in Flemish homes; they and the inmates spoke 
nearly the same language; they got along fairly well; they 
helped the women with the work, the poor and the humble having 
none of those hatreds of patriotism that are among theprivi- 
leges of the upper classes. It is conceivable that the Flemish 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 81 

population might Jiave existed under German rule; it was Teu- 
tonic in its origin and anti- French always. But now the Ger- 
mans have changed all that. 

" They have dealt a mortal Mow to any prospect they may 

ever have had of being tolerated by the popula- 

Germans will ^ on jr Glanders; in tearing away from nearly 

generations. every humble home in the land a husband and 

a father or a son and brother they have lighted a 
fire of haired that will never go out; they have brought home to 
every heart in the land, in a way that will impress its horror 
indelibly on the memory of three generations, a realization of 
what German methods mean, not, as with the early atrocities, in 
the heat of passion and the first lust of war, but by one of those 
deeds that make one despair of the future of the human race, a 
deed coldly planned, studiously matured, and deliberately and 
systematically executed, a deed so cruel that German soldiers are 
said to have wept in its execution, and so monstrous that even 
German officers are now said to be ashamed. 

"Whitlock." 

Mr. Hoover's mature conclusions on the German practices 
in Belgium, which he has written for this pamphlet, reinforce 
the detailed evidence already presented: 

mr. hoover's conclusions. 

September, 1917. 

I have been often called upon for a statement of my 
observation of German rule in Belgium and Northern France. 

I have neither the desire nor the adequate pen to picture 
the scenes which have heated my blood through the two 
and a half years that I have spent in work for the relief of 
these 10,000,000 people. 

The sight of the destroyed homes and cities, the widowed 
and fatherless, the destitute, the physical 

Belgian atroci- j^ery f a people but partially nourished 
ties are the result - -i . ,1 5 ±. ±- * t_j. j? 

of the "system." a ^ best, the deportation ol men by tens ot 
thousands to slavery in German mines and 
factories, the execution of men and women for paltry effu- 
sions of their loyalty to their country, the sacking of every 
resource through financial robbery, the battening of armies 
on the slender produce of the country, the denudation of the 
country of cattle, horses, and textiles; all these things we 
had to witness, dumb to help other than by protest and 
sympathy, during this long and terrible time — and still 
these are not the events of battle heat, but the effects of a 
grinding heel of a race demanding the mastership of the 
world. 

18922*— 17 6 



82 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

AH these things are well known to the world — but what 
can never be known is the dumb agony of the people, the 
expressionless faces of millions whose souls have passed the 
whole gamut of emotions. And why % Because these, a free 
and democratic people, dared plunge their bodies before the 
march of autocracy. 

I myself believe that if we do not fight and fight now, all 
these things are possible to us — but even should the broad 
Atlantic prove our present defender, there is still Belgium. 
Is it worth wlrle for us to live in a world where this free and 
unoffending people is to be trampled into the earth and to 
raise no sword in protest ? 

Herbert Hoover. 

FRANCE. 

In France the German system of forced labor and depor- 
tations, with its attendant callousness, bru- 
German prac- talities, and horrors, was the same as in Bel- 

tices were the m Um> Inasmuch as the German system 
same in all occu- p . J 

pied regions. m action has been adequately illustrated 

in the foregoing pages on Belgium, it will 
suffice in this part simply to show the real identity of German 
practice in the two occupied regions. This can be done 
from the official documents and from a summary by Ambas- 
sador Gerard. The harrowing details may be gathered from 
the scores of depositions which accompany the note ad- 
dressed by the French Government to the Governments of 
the neutral powers July 25, 1916. These are on file in the 
State Department, and have also been translated, along 
with the official documents, in The Deportation, of Women 
and Girls from Lille, New York, Doran. 

PROCLAMATION OF THE GERMAN MILITARY COMMANDANT OF 

LILLE. 

"The attitude of England makes the provisioning of the 
population more and more difficult. 

"To reduce the misery, the German authorities have re- 
cently asked for volunteers to go and work in the country. 
This offer has not had the success that was expected. 

"In consequence of this the inhabitants will be deported 
by order and removed into the country. 

^^ & ^ ^°u a ~ Persons deported will be sent to the interior 
mation at Lille, « ,, I -i J -i • t-< p i 

April, 1916. ' °* the occupied territory in h ranee, iar be- 
hind the front, where they will be employed 
in agricultural labor, and not on any military work what- 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 83 

ever. By this measure they will be given the opportunity 
of providing better for their subsistence. 

"In case of necessity, provisions can be obtained through 
the German depots. Every person deported will be allowed 
to take with him 30 kilograms of baggage (household 
utensils, clothes, etc.), which it will be well to make ready 
at once. 

"I therefore order that no one, until further orders, shall 
change his place of residence. No one may absent himself 
from his declared legal residence from 9 p. m. to 6 a. m. 
(German time), unless he is in possession of a permit in due 
form. 

' ' Inasmuch as this is an irrevocable measure, it is in the 
interest of the population itself to remain calm and obedient. 

"Commandant. 

"Lille, April, 1916." 

NOTICE DISTRIBUTED TO HOUSES IN LILLE. 

"All the inhabitants of the house, with the exception of 
children under fourteen and their mothers, and also of old 

Eeople, must prepare themselves for transportation in an 
our and a half's time. 
"An officer will decide definitively what persons will be 
taken to the concentration camps. For this 
Inhabitants of purpose all the inhabitants of the house must 
Lille given 90 asse mble in front of it; in case of bad weather 
ready to depart? they may remain in the passage. The door 
of the house must remain open. All protests 
will be useless. No inmate of the house, even those who are 
not to be transported, may leave the house before 8 a. m. 
(German time). 

"Each person will be permitted to take 30 kilograms of 
baggage; if anyone's baggage exceeds that weight, it will all 
be rejected without further consideration. Packages must 
be separately made up for each person and must bear an 
address legibly written and firmly affixed. This address 
must contain the surname and the Christian name and the 
number of the identity card. 

"It is absolutely necessary that each person should, in his 
own interest, provide himself with eating and 
Must carry their d r i n ki n g utensils, as well as with a woolen 
sils! C0 ° mguen " blanket, good shoes, and body linen. Every- 
one must carry his identity card on ms 
person. Anyone attempting to evade transportation will be 
punished without mercy." 

' ■ Etappen-Komm andantur. ' ' 
[Lille, April, 1916.] 



84 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

PROTEST OF BISHOP CHAROST, OF LILLE, ADDRESSED TO 
GENERAL VON GRAEVENITZ. 

"Monsieur le General: It is my duty to bring to your 
notice the fact that a "very agitated state of mind exists 
among the population. 

"Numerous removals of women and girls, certain transfers 
of men and youth, and even of children, have been carried 
out in the districts of Tourcoing and Roubaix without ju- 
dicial procedure or trial. 

"The unfortunate people have been sent to unknown 
places. Measures equally extreme and on a 

The Bishop pro- Y ar g er scale are contemplated at Lille. You 
portations™ 8 °~ wu ^ no ^ De surprised, Monsieur le General, 
that I intercede with you in the name of the 
religious mission confided to me. That mission lays on me 
the burden of defending, with respect but with courage, the 
Law of Nations, which the law of war must never infringe, 
and that eternal morality whose rules nothing can suspend. 
It makes it my duty to protect the feeble and the unarmed, 
who are as my family to me and whose burdens and sorrows 
are mine. 

"You are a father; you know that there is not in the order 
of humanity a right more honorable or more 

Appeate to the j^i^ t k ai]L that of the family. For every 
commander. ' Christian the inviolability of God, who cre- 
ated the family, attaches to it. The German 
officers who have been billeted for a long time in our homes 
know how deep in our hearts we of the North hold family 
affection and that it is the sweetest thing in life to us. Thus 
to dismember the family by tearing youths and girls from 
their homes is not war; it is for us tortures and the worst of 
tortures — unlimited moral torture. The violation of family 
rights is doubled by a violation of the sacred demands of 
morality. Morality is exposed to perils, the mere idea of 
which is revolting to every honest man, from the promiscuity 
which inevitably accompanies removals en 

The methods of masse involving mixture of the sexes, or, at 
deportation a dan- u . £ ° j i f i 

ger to morals. a ^ events, 01 persons ol very unequal moral 
standing. Young girls of irreproachable 
life, who have never committed any worse offense than that 
of trying to pick up some bread or a few potatoes to feed a 
numerous family, and who have besides paid the light 
penalty for such trespass, have been carried off. Their 
mothers, who have watched so closely over them and had no 
other joy than that of keeping their daughters beside them, 
in the absence of father and sons fighting or killed at the 
front — these mothers are now alone. They bring to me 
then despair and their anguish. I am speaking of what I 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 85 

have seen and heard. I know that you have no part in these 
harsh measures. You are by nature inclined toward justice; 
that is why I venture to turn to you; I beg you to be good 
enough to forward without delay to the German High Mili- 
tary Command this letter from a Bishop, whose deep grief 
they will easily imagine. We have suffered much for the 
last twenty months, but no stroke of fortune could be com- 
parable to this ; it would be as undeserved as it is cruel and 
would produce in all France an indelible impression. I can- 
not believe that the blow will fall. I have 
Hopes for res- f gj^ } n ^ ne human conscience and I preserve 
ported! 10 C ^ the hope that the young men and girls of 
respectable families will be restored to their 
homes in answer to the demand for their return and that 
sentiments of justice and honor will prevail over all lower 
considerations. 

"Alexis Armand, 

"Bishop." 

ADDRESS OF PROMINENT CITIZENS OF ROUBAIX AND TOUR- 
COING TO THE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE. 

"To Monsieur Raymond Poincare, 

President of the French Republic, Paris. 

"Sir: We have the honor to express again our most sin- 
cere gratitude to you for your most kind reception, a few 
days ago, of the deputation which went with feelings of 
legitimate emotion to inform you of the deportation of lads 
and girls, which the German authorities have just carried 
out in the invaded districts. 

"We have collected some details on the subject from the 
lips of an honorable and trustworthy person, who succeeded 
in leaving Tourcoing about ten days ago; we think it our 
duty to bring these details to your notice by reproducing 
textually the declarations which have been made to us : 

" 'These deportations began towards Easter. The Ger- 
mans announced that the inhabitants of Roubaix, Tour- 
coing, Lille, etc., were going to be transported into French 
districts where their provisioning would be easier.' 

" 'At night, at about 2 o'clock in the morning, a whole 

district of the town was invested by the 

of the^e^ort*- troo I? s °^ occupation. To each house was 

tions. distributed a printed notice, of which we 

give below an exact reproduction, preserving 

the style and spelling.' [See second document, above.] 

" 'The inhabitants so warned were to hold themselves 
ready to depart an hour and a half after the distribution 
of the proclamation.' 



86 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

' ' ' Each family, drawn up outside the house, was exam- 
ined by an officer, who pointed out haphazard the persons 
who were to go. No words can express the barbarity of this 
proceeding nor describe the heartrending scenes which oc- 
curred; young men and girls took a hasty farewell of their 
parents — a farewell hurried by the German soldiers who 
were executing the infamous task — rejoined the group of 
those who were going, and found themselves in the middle 
of the street, surrounded by other soldiers with fixed bay- 
onets.' 

"'Tears of despair on the part of parents and children 
so ruthlessly separatedf did not soften the 

Sometimes a hearts of the brutal Germans. Sometimes, 
kind-hearted offi- k owever a . more kind-hearted officer yielded 
cer could not , , ' , j ivi , J -i 

carry out the ™ too great a despair, and did not choose 

brutal orders. all the persons whom he should — by the 
terms of nis instructions — have separated.' 

" 'These girls and lads were taken in street cars to fac- 
tories, where they were numbered and labelled like cattle 
and grouped to form convoys. In these factories they re- 
mained twelve, twenty-four or thirty-six hours until a train 
was ready to remove them.' 

" 'The deportation began with the villages of Roncq, 
Halluin, etc., then Tourcoing and Roubaix. In the towns 
the Germans proceeded by districts.' 

" ' In all about 30,000 persons are said to have been carried 
off up to the present. This monstrous opera- 
Numbers de- ^ on k ag taken eight to ten days to accom- 
p0 e plish. It is feared, unfortunately, that it 

may begin again soon. The departures took place in freight 
cars to the sound of the "Marseillaise." ' 

"'The reason given by the German authorities is a hu- 
manitarian (?) one. They have put forward the following 
pretexts: provisioning is going to break down in the large 
towns in the north and their suburbs, whereas in the Ar- 
dennes the feeding is easy and cheap.' 

"'It is known from the young men and girls, since sent 
back to their families for reasons of health, 

Young men and that in the Department of the Ardennes the 
"d^-^fuf "* v i c *i ms are lodged in a terrible manner, in 
miscuity?" ?r ° disgraceful promiscuity; they are compelled 
to work in the fields. It it unnecessary to 
say that the inhabitants of our towns are not trained to such 
work. The Germans pay them 1.50 m. But there are 
complaints of insufficient food.' 

"'They were very badly received in the Ardennes. The 
Germans had told the Ardennais that these were "volun- 
teers" who were coming to work, and the Ardennais pro- 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 87 

ceeded to receive them with many insults, which only ceased 
when the forcible deportation, of which they were the vic- 
tims, became known.' 

'" Feeling ran especially high in our towns. Never has so 
iniquitous a measure been carried out. The Germans have 
shown all the barbarity of slave drivers.' 

"'The families so scattered are in despair and the morale 
of the whole population is gravely affected. Boys of 14, 
schoolboys in knickerbockers, young girls of 15 to 16 have 
been carried off, and the despairing protests of their parents 
failed to touch the hearts of the German officers or rather 
executioners.' 

' ' ' One last detail : The persons so deported are allowed to 
write home once a month ; that is to say, even less often than 
military prisoners.' 

"Such are the declarations which we have collected and 
which, without commentary, confirm in an even more strik- 
ing way the facts which we took the liberty of laying before 
you. 

' ' We do not wish here to enter into the question of provi- 
sioning in the invaded districts; others, better qualified than 
ourselves, give you, as we know, frequent information. It 
is enough for us to describe in a few words the situation from 
this aspect: 

"The provisioning is very difficult ; food, apart from that 
supplied by the Spanish- American Committee, is very scarce 
and terribly dear. * * * People are hungry and the pro- 
visioning is inadequate by at least a half; our population 
is suffering constant privations and is growing noticeably 
weaker. The death rate, too, has increased considerably. 

"Sometimes inhabitants of the invaded territories speak 

with a note of discouragement, crying ap- 

People rely^ on narently: 'We are forsaken by everyone.' 

powers! a ™e, on the other hand, are hopeful, Monsieur 

le President, that the energetic intervention 

on the part of Neutrals, which the French Government is 

sure to evoke, will soon bring to an end these measures which 

rouse the wrath of all to whom humanity is not an empty 

word. * * * 

"With all confidence in the sympathy of the Government 
we venture to address a new and pressing appeal to your 
generous kindness and far-reaching influence in the name of 
those who are suffering on behalf of the whole country." 

(Signed on behalf of various specified organizations by 
Toulemonde, Charles Droulers, L6on Hatine-Dazin, and 
Louis Lorthiois.) 

"Paris, 15th June, 1916, 3, rue Taitbout" 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 89 

POLAND. 

The systematic exploitation of human misery by the 
German authorities in Poland followed the general plan 
with which the reader has become only too familiar. In 
order to prove the identity of procedure it will be enough to 
present the detailed report specially written for this pamphlet 
by Mr. Frederic C. Walcott. A fuller and in some ways 
more touching treatment is given in his article, "Devastated 
Poland," in the National Geographic Magazine for May, 1917. 

poland and the prussian system. 

September, 1917. 

Poland — Russian Poland — is perishing. And the German 
high command, imbued with the Prussian system, is 
coolly reckoning on the necessities of a starving people to 
promote its imperial ends. 

West Poland, which has been Prussian territory more 
than a hundred years, is a disappointment to Germany; its 
people obstinately remain Poles. This time they propose 
swifter measures. In two or three years, by grace of star- 
vation and f rightfulness, they calculate East Poland will be 
thoroughly made over into a German province. 

In the great Hindenburg drive one year ago, the country 
. was completely devastated by the retreating 

Paland Statl(m Russian army and the oncoming Germans. 
A million people were driven from their 
homes. Half of them perished by the roadside. For miles 
and miles, when I saw the country, the way was littered 
with mudsoaked garments and bones picked clean by the 
crows — though the larger bones had been gathered by the 
thrifty Germans to be ground into fertilizer. Wicker 
baskets — the little basket in which the baby swings from 
the rafters in every peasant home— were scattered along the 
way, hundreds and hundreds, until one could not count 
them, each one telling a death. 

Warsaw, which had not been destroyed — once a proud 
city of a million people 1 — was utterly stricken. Poor folks 
by thousands lined the streets, leaning against the buildings, 
shivering in snow and rain, too weak to lift a hand, dying of 
cold and hunger. Though the rich gave all they had, and 
the poor shared their last crust, they were starving there in 
the streets in droves. 

In the stricken city, the German governor of Warsaw 
issued a proclamation. All able-bodied Poles were bidden 
to go to Germany to work. If any refused, let no other 



90 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES, 

Pole give him to eat, not so much as a mouthful, under 
penalty of German military law. 

It was more than the mind could grasp. To the husband 

and father of broken f amines, the high com- 

The policy of man( j g ave this decree: Leave your families 

to starve ; if you stay, we shall see that you 

do starve — this to a high-strung, sensitive, highly organized 

people, this fr.om the authorities of a nation professing 

civilization and religion to millions of fellow Christians 

captive and starving. 

General von Kries, the governor, was kind enough to 

Country to be explain. Candidly, they preferred not quite 
restocked with so much starvation; it might get on the 
Germans. nerves of the German soldiers. But, starva- 

tion being present, it must work for German purpose. Tak- 
ing advantage of this wretchedness, the working men of 
Poland were to be removed; the country was to bo restocked 
with Germans. It was country Germany needed — rich 
alluvial soil — better suited to German expansion than 
distant possessions. If the POLAND that was had to 
perish, so much the better for Germany. 

Remove the men, let the young and weak die, graft Ger- 
man stock on the women. See how simple it is: with a 
crafty smile, General von Kries concluded, "By and by we 
must give back freedom to Poland. Very good; it will re- 
appear as a German province. \ 

Slowly, I came to realize that this monstrous, incredible 
thing was the PRUSSIAN SYSTEM, deliberately chosen by 
the circle around the all-highest, and kneaded into the Ger- 
man people till it became part of their mind. 

German people are material for building the State — of 
no other account. Other people are for Germany's will to 
work upon. Humanity, liberty, equality, the rights of 
others — all foolish talk. Democracy, an idle dream. The 
true Prussian lives only for this, that the German State may 
be mighty and great. 

All the woes in the long count against Germany are part 
of the Prussian system. The invasion of 

German system Belgium, the deportations, the starving of sub- 
everywhere. CS> J e °t people, the Armenian massacres, atroci- 
ties, frightfulness, sinking the Lusitania, the 
submarine horrors, the enslavement of woman — all piece 
into the monstrous view. The rights of nations, the rights 
of men, the lives and liberties of all people are subordinate 
to the German aim of dominion over all the world. 

Frederic C. Walcott. 



CONCLUSION. 

STATEMENT OF MR. VERNON KELLOGG, SEPTEMBER, 1917. 
(Prepared for this pamphlet.) 

It was my privilege — and necessity — in connection with 
the work of the Commission for Relief in Belgium to spend 
several months at the Great Headquarters of the German 
armies in the west, and later to spend more months at 
Brussels as the Commission's director for Belgium and occu- 
pied France. It was an enforced opportunity to see some- 
thing of German practice in the treatment of a conquered 
people, part of whom (the French and the inhabitants of the 
Belgian provinces of East and West Flanders) were under the 
direct control of the German General Staff and the several 
German armies of the west, and part, the inhabitants of the 
seven other Belgian provinces, under the quasi-civil gov- 
ernment of Governor General von Bissing. I did not enter 
the occupied territories until June, 1915, and so, of course, 
saw none of the actual invasion and overrunning of the 

land. I saw only the graves of the massacred 
The graves of an( j ^ e rums f their towns. But I saw 
tne massacred. -1 i_ j i_ i 1 i ,1 i , 

through the long, hard months much too 

much for my peace of mind of how the Germans" treated the 
unfortunates under their control after the occupation. 

It would be an unnecessary repetition to describe again 
the scenes in Louvain, Dinant, Vise, Andenne, Tamines, 
Aerschot, and the rest of the f amiliar long list of the ruined 
Belgian towns. But too little has been said of the many, 
many ruined villages all over the extent of the occupied 
French territory from Lille in the north to Longwy in the 
south, and from the eastern boundary of France to the fatal 
trench lines of the extreme western front. 

As chief representative for the Commission, it was my duty 
to cover this whole territory repeatedly in long motor jour- 
neys in company with the German officer assigned for my 
protection — and for the protection of the German army 
against any too much seeing. As I had opportunity also 
to cover most of Belgium in repeated trips from Brussels 
into the various provinces, I necessarily had opportunity to 
compare the destruction wrought in the two regions. 

I could understand why certain towns and villages along 
the Meuse and along the lines of the French and English 
retreat were badly shot to pieces. There had been fighting 

91 



92 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

in these towns and the artillery of first one side and then the 
other had worked their havoc among the houses of the inhabit- 
ants. But there were many towns in which 

l T ?^ n ^ un ~ there had been no fighting and yet all too 
touched by war <? ,-> , „ & , & • J T , 

but ruined. many oi these towns also were in rums. It 

was not ruin by shells, but ruin by fire and 
explosions. These were the famous "punished" towns. 
Either a citizen or perhaps two or three citizens had fired 
from a window on the invaders — or were alleged to have. 
Thereupon a block, or two or three blocks, or half the town 
was methodically and effectively burned or blown to pieces. 
There are many of these "punished" towns in occupied 
France. And between these towns and along the roadways 
are innumerable isolated single farm houses that are also in 
ruins. It is not claimed that there was any sniping from 
these farm houses. They were just destroyed along the 
way — and by the way, one may say. When the roll of 
destroyed villages and destroyed farm houses in occupied 
France is made known, the world will be shocked again by 
this evidence of German thoroughness. 

The rigor of the control over the inhabitants of the occu- 
pied French territory is almost inconceivable. The lines 
delimiting the regions occupied by the various distinct 

German armies are lines of impassable steel 
Heartlessness f or £ ne inhabitants. If a member of the 
oi (jrerman rule. j* *i • j. ■•.!_■ £ • i 

family in one town was visiting friends or 

relatives in another town a few kilometres away at the time 
of the outbreak of the war that family has remained sepa- 
rated through all the long months that have since elapsed. 
No messages 4?an pass except by dangerous subterranean 
ways from town to town. 

The requisitioning of everything from food to furniture, 
from farm animals to the blankets and mattresses from the 
beds, has been carried to such an extent that the people 
live on nothing, amid nothing. These requisitions in the 
earlier days had a more or less official seeming in that quar- 
termaster's oons were given for the things taken. Even 
then the German sense of humor too often made the oon 
a crude jest: The Ions were written in the 

False receipts G erm an language in German script, illegible 
for requisitioned j , -, ,, & 1 , ,. J^.J .=> , 

property. ano - beyond the understanding of the simp_e 

natives. A oon might be given for a chicken 
when it was a pair of horses that was taken. But later, 
when these jests palled on the German soldiers, the requisi- 
tioning was simplified by the omission of Jon-giving. Where 
the villagers and peasants had tried to save something that 
could be buried or concealed, the searching out of these 
pitiful hiding places became a great game with the German 



GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 93 

soldiers. One ingenious Frenchman had secreted a few 
choice bottles of wine in a famous tomb on heights above the 
Meuse. But these bottles found their way to special tables 
at the Great Headquarters. 

In the spring of 1916 the army authorities devised the plan 
of deporting a number of men and women from Lille ancl the 
industrial towns near it to the agricultural regions further 
south. These French were to work in the fields and help 
produce food for the German army. As a matter of fact this 
plan had at bottom something to recommend it. The con- 
gestion in the industrialized northern region made the food 
problem there very difficult. Our Commission had more 
trials in connection with the provisioning of the great city of 
Lille and the lesser but crowded towns of Valenciennes, 
Roubaix, and Tourcoing than with all the rest of the occupied 
territory. Also these people had no work to do, as the great 
factories were still. To come south and work in the open air 
in the fields and be allowed a fair ration would have been a 
real advantage to these people. It would also have helped 
in the whole food supply situation. 

But the horrible methods of that deportation were such 
that we, although trying to hold steadfast to a rigorous 
neutrality, could not but protest. Mr. Gerard, our Ambas- 
sador to Berlin, happened at the very time of this protest to 
make a visit to the Great Headquarters in the west and the 
matter was brought to the attention of certain high officers 
at Headquarters on the very day of Mr. Gerard's visit and in 
his hearing. So that he added his own protest to that of 
Mr. Poland, our director at the time, and further deporta- 
tions were stopped. But a terrible mischief had already 
been done. Husbands and fathers had been 

Horrors of de- t a k en f r0 rn their families without a word of 
Donations. -, ■• ■, ■, ■, . , 

good-bye ; sons and daughters on whom per- 
haps aged parents relied for support were taken without pity 
or apparent thought of the terrible consequences. The great 
deportations of Belgium have shocked the world. But these 
lesser deportations — that is, lesser in extent, but not less 
brutal in their carrying out — are hardly known. 

I went into Belgium and occupied France a neutral and I 

maintained while there a steadfastly neutr al 

oo?l,-i^f™^ behavior. But I came out no neutral. I 
can tail to oppose , . i . . . 

Prussianism. can no ^ conceive that any American enjoying 
an experience similar to mine could have 
come out a neutral. He would come out, as I came, with the 
ineradicable conviction that a people or a government which 
can do what the Germans did and are doing in Belgium and 
France to-day must not be allowed, if there is power on earth 
to prevent it, to do this a moment longer than can be helped. 
And they must not be allowed ever to do it again. 



94 GERMAN WAR PRACTICES. 

I went in also a hater of war, and I came out a more ardent 

hater of war. But, also, I came out with the 

Civilization ineradicable conviction, again, that the only 

sian system. " wa y m which Germany under its present rule 

and in, its present state of mind can be kept 

from doing what it has done is by force of arms. It can not 

be prevented by appeal, concession, or treaties. Hence. 

ardently as I hope that all war may cease, I hope that this 

war may not cease until Germany realizes that the civilized 

world simply will not allow such horrors as those for which 

Germany is responsible in, Belgium and France to be any 

longer possible. 

Vernon Kellogg. 

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